Building egalitarian society is political choice countries make. Societies can choose not only whether to be egalitarian or not but to what extent. I recently saw a report published by the UN about the most equal/unequal cities. You wouldn't believe me if I told you Beijing was first or top 5 while New York, New Orleans and London were among least unequal. How come Beijing has less inequality than London or New York?
There's nothing inevitable about social inequality. In Japan, an engineer makes about the same salary as McDonald worker. The implication of this is that you won't find many luxury stores in Japan compared to other countries of similar income. Instead, Japanese buy from their own companies who don't tend to produce luxury goods since there aren't many super rich Japanese. How many Japanese you see in Forbes Billionaire list? Not many. To give another illustration, the CEO of Toyota -- the most successful car maker in the world -- makes under 1 million while his counterpart, the CEO of General Motors -- a company going to the dumps faster than you can say GM -- makes over 8 million.
noangst you are talking about Japan of the 50,and 60s and to a lesser extent the 70's.
By the 80's japan outspent most of western europe and the US in consumption of luxury goods.
even during the lost decade of the 90's recession consumption of luxury goods is very high.
One stroll through the ginza or any part of downtown Tokyo and you will see this extarvagant display and consumption of luxury.
even me from dubai the land of shameless consumerism was impressed by
a simple department store Toie in tokyo.
I believe the reason why the japanese spend allot of thier income on luxury goods is becuase they cannot spend it on cars due to congestion of the cities and heavy taxation and they cannot spend it on huge mansions for the same reason.
So while they will live in a cramped condo, a regular middle class japanese will
spend allot on chanel, givenchy etc and also the latest electronic gadgets,
and the average japanese will spend an absolute fortune entertaining guests outside of the home, in bars resteraunts.
