According to the ILO (UN labour organisation) [1], in PPP dollars global average wage is 1480$ per month. So for the US equality would mean that 50% of working

According to the ILO (UN labour organisation) [1], in PPP dollars global average wage is 1480$ per month. So for the US equality would mean that 50% of working age people earn less than that. This is only counting wage-earners. No freelancers, children, elderly or anything like that are collected. In the US, average wage for employed individuals is about 42000 [2]. Since there are 300 million Americans and 6.7 billion non-Americans, America should shift almost entirely to the average to get income equality. This will mean the equivalent of a 55% across-the-board pay cut for every American, provided prices do not go down. Your rent will stay the same, but your income should go down 55%. (This is in fact happening, but is manifesting as uneven inflation without corresponding wage rises, so you'd experience an 81% rise in average prices, rent, food, restaurants, ..., while seeing your wage stay the same) Also note that average worldwide unemployment is at least a factor of 3 higher than in the US. So it would not just take a massive pay cut, but also firing close to 20% of all workers, to bring the US into the worldwide average. This is why socialists are (or should be) against immigration, and should be pro-isolationist. I think that if you want to improve the conditions of the American working class, that would be the correct attitude to have. In reality the period of 1950-today has been a very exceptional period in history where not only incomes were higher, by most measures, than ever before, but income inequality was far lower than the vast majority of economic history. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 [2] http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml