- Joanna
Coup in South Korea. Pro-European protests in the streets of Georgian cities. Bashar al-Assad's Syria falling like a house of cards. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of chaos hit by the ship of world order. Beneath the surface lies the fullness of this iceberg, made up of many other elements. Among them, we can mention the imperial crusade of the Russian Federation in Ukraine and, above all, the strategic confrontation between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. However, the geopolitical mirror is only one of many through which we can look at the crackling world of late 2024.
Let us not forget the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, the new era of space exploration or the growing influence of cryptocurrencies. On the other hand, there is a recurring theme of class struggle: economic and social inequalities are growing, and not necessarily along the familiar lines of rich and poor countries. All these themes are brought together, as if through a lens, by the new 47th US president - Donald Trump. Trump is, in a way, a complement to this chaos, its face and its representative. Why has the chaotic system brought Trump to the top of the world? What are the opportunities and risks of his reign, and why is it so important for the fate of the whole world?
Let us look at the world through the eyes of Donald John Trump.
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The world according to Trump
We live in the world of Donald Trump. From the moment the American election results were announced, all political, economic, and military observers were focused on the future President of the United States.
Successive surprise appointments, unceremonious announcements, and even threats have fallen like thunderbolts from a clear sky almost every day since his victory. Rational personnel choices like Michael Waltz as National Security Advisor, John Ratcliffe as head of the CIA, or Scott Bessent as Secretary of the Treasury are mixed with bizarre ones like Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defence or David Sacks as ‘crypto czar’, or even outright dangerous ones like Tulsi Gabbard as National Security Director.
Anyone who tries to analyse these moves in search of any kind of scheme, a key or a grand strategy is doomed to failure in advance.
However, it is no wonder that so many are trying to unravel this. Virtually every strategic area of world politics will depend on the moves of Trump's America in 2025: whatever the field. Literally, the fate of every human being in the world can be linked to it (except perhaps the monks meditating in Tibetan caves). Geopolitically, it is the war in Ukraine, the conflict with China, or relations with ailing Europe. Economically, it is the question of the protectionist policies that Trump is announcing everywhere. Finally, there is the niche of new technologies and the future: AI, semiconductors, electric cars or space flight.
Of course, someone might say that we know what Trump is going to do because he says so. The problem is that Trump, like any good salesman, says a lot, but his moves will not necessarily lead in a linear fashion to the implementation of his announcements. One example is Trump and Waltz's tacit acquiescence to escalating the situation with Russia, even though he was supposed to force peace within 24 hours. Second, the effect of implementing these announcements may not necessarily have the expected outcome. His moves may simply have the opposite effect then intended.
Trump's opponents and scoffers have a simple explanation for these moves: incompetence and self-absorbed ego. And while it may be tempting to end this topic with such a trivial explanation, given the importance of Trump's election to everyone's fate, it is worth leaning a little further and considering other possibilities.
What if Trump's unpredictability and chaos are an advantage in this day and age, for that is also the nature of the current era? Martin Sandbu, in the FT, argues that Trump's unpredictability is deliberate.
“At a basic level, autocrats (actual and wannabes) and gangster bosses thrive on fear and reject the rule of law (in the broadest possible sense of a system of rules that applies consistently to everyone). As Chris Grey explains, the unpredictability based on a leader’s personal caprice is central to their way of running things — a feature, not a bug.”
The author develops this idea within the framework of game theory, which studies strategic behaviour: situations in which your best move depends on the moves of other players, who in turn try to predict your move. Therefore, in this theory, the best strategy is the strategy of randomness. An opponent cannot play the game according to his rules and push it in a direction that suits him better, because he simply cannot anticipate his opponent's moves.
Sandbu adds: "True randomness is hard to manufacture. So it helps to be seen as a little bit mad, or a little bit out of control. Indeed, the beautifully named “trembling hand equilibrium” is a game-theoretic concept showing how optimal strategies must treat others’ behaviour as constantly subject to random perturbation: the finger that pushes the button could always tremble. “
Look at the nominations: Trump doesn't hesitate to pick Pete Hegseth as secretary of defence to fight the woke culture in the army, and at the same time to pick Scott Bessent as secretary of the treasury to be the first openly gay person in office. He is betting on Tulsi Gabbard, who has made many statements in line with Kremlin propaganda, while sending Keith Kellogg, who has often been 180 degrees opposite on the same issues, to deal with the war in Ukraine. These are 'just' appointments for now, but they provide some interpretation of the chaos we may see over the next four years.
Of course, in Trump's case, it is difficult to assume that this chaos is a calculated, cold-blooded ploy dictated by some compelling theory. Trump is just like that. What is interesting is that the social and political processes bubbling beneath the surface in America have put a person with exactly these characteristics at the head of the most important power. And it is worth remembering that Trump had already considered running for the presidency in the late 1980s and early 2000s. But at the time, his profile did not match the realities of the current world.
The costs of predictability
For America, or the West more broadly, has been synonymous with predictability in recent decades. Predictability is good because it allows for rational analysis and profit-driven action. When we invest in a country, we want it to be stable, and we want tax laws not to change every four or five years.However, as we can see from the game theory I quoted earlier, unpredictability brings certain benefits in certain circumstances.
Predictability was rewarded in the predictable world dominated by the US after 1990. Stable countries playing the game orchestrated by the Americans could count on the favour of Western capital and armies. Places that lacked this stability were not allowed at the table (lack of investment and participation in key formats), and if they exported this unpredictability to the region, they were restored to stability by force (even if this stability was “stability of ruins”).
However, the rise of the People's Republic of China to its current position has changed the rules of the game. Beijing has become, so to speak, a 'sponsor of chaos', offering a safe haven to all those actors who build their positions on the basis of unpredictability. Sandbu rightly reminds us that unpredictability is one of the most important characteristics of any autocrat. It is usually this feature that helped him rise to power earlier in the chaotic system from which he emerged.
But getting back to China, it has suddenly become clear that actors who do not 'play by the rules' or make unpredictable decisions are beginning to be rewarded for doing so. Before the war in Ukraine, Russia was always one step ahead of the West and, anticipating the West's (soft) moves, it took Crimea and Donbas while its position was the strongest in 20 years. Iran had developed its axis of resistance in the Middle East and was expanding its reach. North Korea's successive nuclear tests were somehow accepted because of the strong Chinese umbrella over the Kim regime. In addition, a dozen strongmen leaders in Africa built their spheres of influence on the basis of countries that broke the established order, while crowding out the influence of predictable powers - notably the French.
In other words, unpredictability began to be highly rewarded in global geopolitics. Slow and predictable democratic systems began to lose ground in a game with fewer and fewer rules. These rules were cynically exploited by those actors who had no intention of playing the game according to it. On the one hand, they appealed to the institutions of the existing order when it suited them (WTO, UN, etc.), and on the other hand, they broke these rules at every opportunity when it blocked their offensive gameplay.
Europe meekly trusted the successive pronouncements of Russia, which never had any intention of honouring the commitments it had made, for example in the Minsk agreements. China, on the other hand, never intended to participate in the free market and globalisation under the rules of the WTO - its sole aim was to build up its own power. If that meant stealing intellectual property, subsidising its own producers and eliminating foreign ones, then no problem.
The West, seduced by the prospect of short-term improvement, has always paid the price in long-term instability.
Thus the predictable West drifted until 24 February 2022. At that point, Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to the first UNpredictable consequences that Moscow had not anticipated. The cumulative value of the West's response exceeded the Kremlin's assumptions many times over, meaning that Moscow failed in its calculations to enter the war. But not all of its predictions about the West were wrong. In retrospect, it can be said that the Kremlin correctly predicted that the West would not "let it die", i.e. it would not allow a situation of complete defeat and possible disintegration of Russia. Such a scenario was too unpredictable for the West.
And just at this moment, the world's greatest superpower is putting up a man whose unpredictability can trump all the autocrats mentioned above. Of course, someone will say: wait a minute, Trump has governed before. True, but his first administration, despite some symptoms of unpredictability, was relatively conservative. On a similar level to the Democratic administration that followed. Back then, Trump still seemed to be playing by the rules of Washington D.C. and the establishment. Now, however, the chains have been broken.
In addition to a number of controversial appointments, Trump has announced mass deportations, a war on the LGBTQ community, and the health care policies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On the international stage, it is no different: imposing high tariffs in many directions, escalating the situation with China, ending the war in Ukraine from a position of strength, fighting the Mexican cartels, or even undermining America's continued participation in NATO.
In a word, Trump and his entourage are turning the tables, as if to say: 'Since no one is playing by the rules we have created, we will not play by them either, and we will see for whom it works'. If this is the attitude of the greatest 'fuse of global stability', the result is clear: chaos and the law of the jungle. And in the jungle of the international system, what counts is the same as in the Amazon jungle: strength, cunning, survival and adaptability.
Opportunity for democracy?
In fact, Trump can, in a way, be seen as a certain “course correction” for the current stage of democratic system development, especially if he succeeds. For there is no escaping the conclusion that the democratic states of the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century fell into a kind of matrix of complacency and lost touch with reality. Their actions have often been diluted, delayed, ineffective or even counterproductive - this may be quite a generalisation, but we would not be in a situation of global chaos and autocracies gaining strength if it were otherwise. Democratic states are simply often ‘outplayed’ by autocratic regimes, whose potential is usually much lower. So why are they being outplayed? Because the strategic decisions the democracies take usually pass through a series of successive mirrors: interest groups, ideological overlays, the search for a rotten consensus, or political polarisation serving party interests. The end result is often very far from the real need and effective action.
This will sound rather brutal, but in recent decades (post-China rise) autocrats have often been better at navigating the international environment than democratic governments: they have been quicker, more cunning, better at exploiting opportunities relative to their potential. This last caveat is important, because let us remember that autocratic states generally have less collective potential, because their economies are not freed up and are thus less efficient, than standard free market economies. On the other hand, more flexible and agile autocrats are better able to achieve their goals on the international stage, despite this lower potential
This is where Trump 2.0 comes in, offering a similar set of 'tough-guy leader' qualities but with the world's largest market economy behind him.
This is both an opportunity and a major risk. A person with the profile of a tough, chaotic leader with a big ego on the world's most important democratic post is the ideal scenario for an attempt to seize power motivated by state inefficiency (e.g. by bending the rule of law or by populism and propaganda). The final destination of such a path is obvious - autocracy. And that is why the strength of American institutions will be so important over the next four years - it is these institutions that will play a key role in his second term. It is not for nothing that Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson won the 2024 Nobel Prize for their book 'Why Nations Fail?', in which they argue that what distinguishes rich, prosperous and stable countries from poorer and declining ones is the strength of their national institutions: economic, political or judicial. It is these institutions that bind the country together, give hope that the cleaner lady has the same rights in court as the president, and ensure the continuity of the state regardless of who is in power.
So the key to a successful Trump presidency may be his unpredictability on the international stage, which he will approach with greater flexibility than traditional democracies, while keeping his own ego in check through effective domestic and international institutions. If this works for Trump's administration, he may be followed by a wave of like-minded leaders in other countries.
The profile of a strongman (or women) leader of a democratic country is not entirely new. In America alone, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan come to mind. For the British, it was Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher; for the French, Charles De Gaulle; and for the Singaporean, Lee Kuan Yew.
Of course, Donald Trump is nowhere near the position of any of these people. Each stood out for something different, and the world was different under each of these leaders. Roosevelt fought Hitler and divided the world with Stalin and Churchill, Reagan 'defeated' the Soviets, de Gaulle rebuilt a strong and sovereign Fifth Republic, and Lee Kuan Yew created a globally unique state project in Singapore.
A new technological revolution
Trump's 'litmus test' will be China, but that is not the only area in which he wants to be remembered. Because Trump could be a key player in the new technological revolution we are on the cusp of. His inclusion of top Silicon Valley figures in the administration, particularly members of the so-called 'PayPal mafia', may not be entirely unprecedented (as Big Tech has been involved in policymaking before), but the scale with which Trump is doing it is indeed absolutely unprecedented.
As a reminder, the 'PayPal mafia' is an informal term for a group of former PayPal founders and employees who, after selling the company to eBay in 2002, went on to become successful in the tech industry by founding or backing other influential companies. This group includes Peter Thiel, later founder of Palantir Technologies, David Sacks - Yammer, Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn, Hurley, Chen and Karim - YouTube, Wong - CEO of Reddit, or finally Musk - tech baron and owner of Tesla, SpaceX or X.
Directly as many as three of this group: Thiel, Sacks and, of course, Musk, are very closely linked to the new administration. Peter Thiel has been financially supporting Trump since the first election campaign, while Palantir's main clients are government cells such as the CIA and FBI.
Sacks and Musk, on the other hand, have been given their own departments. David Sacks has been appointed as the 'crypto and AI czar of the White House'. His remit will include overseeing policy on AI, free speech and cryptocurrency development. While Elon Musk will lead the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), along with Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk's main aim is to cut waste from government bureaucracy. He intends to cut unnecessary regulations and spending, and his goal is to reduce the federal budget by at least $2 trillion from its current level of around $6.5 trillion.
In addition to the three mentioned above, Trump is also supported by established Silicon Valley figures: the founder of Netscape - Marc Andreesen, Palmer Luckey - CEO of Anduril: a high-tech defence company, Oracle founder Larry Elisson, or even Mark Zuckerberg - head of Meta.
You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that they all helped Trump come to power in their own way (especially Musk through X), and now Trump is paying off his debts as a businessman with a reputation. This in turn means even more power for Big Tech than it had (and it had enormous power), with some like Naval Ravikant directly suggesting that after Trump's appointments there is no doubt that it is Silicon Valley that now holds the most power in the world.
This situation presents both great opportunities and great risks. To start with the problems, there is a clear conflict of interest when business impacts the creation of legislation for itself and monitors its own activities. In such situations, it is usually the smallest at the end of the chain, the consumer, who suffers. More power for the richest is also another element of the class warfare that continues to bubble up in the US and around the world - more on that in a moment. Instead of levelling out inequalities, the richest got an even bigger piece of the pie. Therefore, as we pointed out earlier, an extremely important role will fall to the independent institutions that will have to stand in the way of abuses of power.
On the other hand, an 'agent of chaos' at the helm of the greatest technological power is a dream come true for the country's high-tech companies. Technological development feeds on disorder, and it is true that the operations, innovation and growth of these companies have often been stifled by excessive regulation - causing them, among other things, to lose out in direct competition with Chinese rivals. If regulations in AI, crypto or space are tailored to the leading companies, their development and products could take off into… 'space', leading to unpredictable outcomes.
The space, artificial intelligence and green technology sectors are emerging as clear winners. It is no coincidence that the leading players in all three sectors are owned by Elon Musk and are: SpaceX, GrokX and Tesla. If Musk really wants to change the world and establish colonies on Mars, he has now all the tools he needs. The investment of almost $300 million (peanutes compared to Musk's fortune) in Trump's campaign is now paying off many times over. When it comes to AI, he has many strong competitors and is somewhat behind the competition, but for SpaceX the next for 4 years surely will be a harvest time. After all, NASA's new chief executive is Jared Isaacman, the tech billionaire who made a name for himself as the commander of the first civilian orbital mission and the first commercial spacewalk. Jim Bridenstine, a former NASA administrator, has said that Isaacman 'will bring the vision and experience to lead NASA into a new era of discovery', although there is no doubt that his close relationship with Musk will push him towards SpaceX (another conflict of interest).
So America can all fly away, figuratively and literally, on the wings of its technology champions, and Trump is like a keyholder handing over the keys to the gate of that success. The question remains: won't big tech grow even too big while the state loses its tools to control it, leaving ordinary people out in the cold?
Because still big, and perhaps the biggest problem in the US, but also in the world, remains the issue of social inequality.
The new (old) class war
According to the Federal Reserve, at the end of the second quarter of 2024, the richest 0.1% of people in the US owned about $21tn in assets, or about 14% of all US wealth. The richest 1% (including the richest 0.1% mentioned above) already owned $46tn, or about 30%. The richest 10% own over $100 trillion, or 66% of the total. But the most shocking statistic is the last one - the thin line at the bottom represents the total wealth of the poorer half of society and is just under $4 trillion, or 2.6% of the total. This means that 334,000 people in the richest 0.1% have more than five times the wealth of the 167 million poorest Americans. What is more, it is clear that these inequalities have only increased since the pandemic.
Peter Turchin, in his book “End Times” frames the phenomenon of inequality within a cycle, and waves of political instability.
Good, prosperous times lead to an overproduction of elites: universities produce more students, high social status is achieved by more and more people, while the number of high positions of power remains the same, so some of the potential elites are frustrated and become counter-elites.
At the same time, the "wealth pump", makes the rich even richer, as access to capital and power makes it much easier to multiply. Interest groups emerge to support each other and protect each other's wealth. This fuels social and economic inequality.
Nepotism, corruption, conflicts among elites fuelled by a grassroots ‘people's upsurge’ makes the system increasingly unstable. Louder and louder protests erupt, society becomes radicalised and polarised, more and more extreme candidates come to the fore (sounds familiar?).
In the face of the crisis, the aforementioned counter-elites are emerging - people aspiring to leadership roles who have been rejected by the system and who are using social discontent to undermine the status quo. Their actions can lead to further destabilisation or radical change.
As the author writes: ‘Beginning in 1970, relative pay in the US began to decline. Between 1976 and 2016, it lost almost 30 per cent of its value.’ Turchin builds his theories based on mathematical models spanning many countries and several centuries back, based on several economic variables. From these, he concluded that America will enter a period of major political instability in the second and third decades of the 21st century. And he was making his predictions even before Donald Trump came to power in 2016.
But is Trump realistically an agent of the counter-elites and working-class people? He certainly received a clear mandate of support from them, and their vote was often an expression of opposition to the 'current social contract'. That is why he generally had the support of the poorest sections of society behind him in the elections. However, real action in their favour would have meant introducing legislation that would have reduced the huge disparities in wealth between the social strata, e.g. in the form of higher taxes on the richest or companies and a transfer to the poorest classes, with policies of various kinds. Meanwhile, the richest 10% of Americans, not to mention the richest 0.1%, are most often associated with the American Big Tech, with which Trump has entered into a kind of "marriage". It is unlikely that he will now turn against them and pick a fight with them. Looking again at this graph and the years 2017-2021, i.e. Trump's first term, there is no change in the trend, which is negative for the poorest.
But what if Trump wants to have his cake and eat it too?
To understand Trump's potential strategy, let's take another book, 'Trade wars are class wars'. Pettis and Klein's book completely redefines the way we look can at interstate conflict. As the title suggests, it is income and wealth inequalities within countries that lead to trade imbalances at the global level. Countries with excess savings somehow force others into debt, leading to trade conflicts.
Why? The export surpluses of some countries must be reflected in the deficits of others. Countries that do not consume enough (such as China or Germany) force other countries (such as the US or Greece) to import and borrow, leading to imbalances in the global balance of payments.
The result is that the elites in these countries, e.g. the US and China, are in effect 'playing in one team' at the expense of the poorer sections of society in both countries. This is best illustrated by the example of China and the US. As we discussed in the episode 'Is Xi's China the new Soviets', Beijing very much suppresses consumption at home at the expense of its citizens. It 'sends' its financial surpluses, generated by its huge exports, to the US, which offers the best financial instruments, including government bonds.
This leads in turn to the “financialisation of US economy”, while at the same time cutting out the manufacturing sector, which is uncompetitive with Chinese rivals because it operates at cost. The result? The poorer sections of society in both countries are losing out. The richest elites win. In addition, financial surpluses from almost every country in the world go to the US. This makes the average American unimaginably rich (by world standards), but at the same time perpetuates huge inequalities as the American elite enjoy the spoils.
To avoid global trade conflicts and internal class wars, the authors suggest global economic reforms that reduce inequality, such as higher wages, increased domestic consumption and a more balanced trade policy. This echoes Turchin's recommendations, who concludes that the final boiling point is either social revolution (even in the form of civil war) or a new social contract in which the richest share the benefits with the poor.
However, Trump's forthcoming term in office is unlikely to herald this. The American wants to continue championing US big tech while (almost by force) attracting manufacturing and foreign investment to the United States. This policy would be complemented by a protectionist tariff policy. So the richest would keep what they have, while the poorest would get new jobs and, by increasing market competitiveness, (perhaps) get richer. At the expense, by the way, of the places from which production will be transferred to the US.
But there are risks to this approach. Although the policy of 'bringing production home' may bring some benefits to the working class, it does not provide for significant tax reforms or wealth redistribution. This means that the richest will retain their privileges, while improvements for the poorest will be partial. In addition, protectionist policies are likely to exacerbate trade conflicts, which could increase the cost of living through price rises and inflation. Who will feel this most? The poorest.
Moreover, the uncontrolled use of all the attributes of the US superpower against other players in the game could provoke opposition from other fundamental members of the system. Until now, they have accepted such an arrangement, i.e. the dominant role of the US, the dollar and the institutions controlled by the Americans, because Washington's contribution has been to maintain the stability of the system and to cement it with its military power (mainly the US Navy).
Trump proclaims that this is coming to an end, as the rest are often 'free riders' on Pax Americana. Trump's narrative suggests that allies are 'parasites' on the system, while the US has borne the entire burden of maintaining it. Is this really the case, given that the US remains the world's undisputed superpower and that the average American financially 'looks down' on the whole world? Global capital transfers show that the world system remains eminently pro-American. Therefore, an even greater 'milking' of this system could lead to a revolt within the camp of Western democracies, as they feel over-exploited by the Americans and seek alternative (to American) solutions - this is already partly visible in the proposals of the French, for example.
There are therefore many indications that Trump will overturn many pieces on the global chessboard, but he will not overturn the most important one - that of the elites, which is the largest in America. And that is good news for all the other elites in other parts of the world because, as Klein and Pettis show, they feed off each other. Trump therefore does not look like a genuine representative of the counter-elite, but rather someone who skilfully played this card in his election campaign.
This shows that the chaos of the modern world is not only not going to diminish, but is likely to increase steadily, as everyone wants to maintain their privileges, meanwhile the group of the poorest, made up of billions of people worldwide who are not represented by the system, is only growing - whether in the US, China, the Union or the Global South. In the US, Trump blames China, Europe, Canada or Mexico for this state of affairs. The EU blames China and Russia. China, on the other hand, blames the Union and the US, as does the Global South. But the truth, as Pettis and Klein show, does not necessarily follow 'national borders'. For all its problems, Europe seems to be the most egalitarian (though not excessively so) in this context, which could be a good start for it to rebuild its position.
On the other hand, the 'wealth pump' of the richest in the US and partly in China may bring technological breakthroughs - including the creation of colonies on the Moon or later on Mars. Or the emergence of an artificial intelligence indistinguishable in conversation and logic from a human being, directly connected to the internet and placed, for example, in the body of a humanoid, as an assistant to each of us. Perhaps Big Tech hopes that the resulting leap in productivity will massively relieve the burden and raise the standard of living of the poorest, thus diluting their claims?
But this is questionable, especially in the short term, and it does not solve the problem of inequality, because the eternal truth is that ... people compare themselves to each other. The truth is that the average Smith, Kowalski or Li in 2025 is better off than an English king 200 years ago because he has access to vaccines, sanitation, a car or can fly to the other side of the world. But if everyone around you is at that level, it doesn't mean that much, especially as on the 'top of the mountain' will still sit a small group of people accumulating wealth around them. Then, there will always be a multitude of people demanding a fair distribution, and we know from history that this often ends in war.
Chaos is, therefore the new normal, or perhaps the world is simply returning to its default settings.
Sources:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/nearly-100-former-national-security-officials-alarmed-gabbard-rcna183121
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/25/politics/trump-tariffs-mexico-canada-china/index.html
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1863009545858998512
https://www.google.pl/search?as_st=y&hl=pl&as_q=paypal+mafia&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=2mp&imgar=&imgcolor=&imgtype=&cr=&as_sitesearch=&as_filetype=&tbs=&udm=2#vhid=MZwVeOPY8HE2TM&vssid=mosaic
https://x.com/naval/status/1864977093991501919
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#range:1989.3,2024.2;quarter:139;series:Net%20worth;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7,9;units:levels
https://www.ft.com/content/6de668c7-64e9-4196-b2c5-9ceca966fe3f
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before-tax-wid-extrapolations?time=1955..latest&country=USA~GBR~POL~CHN~DEU~European+Union+%28WID%29~BRA~RUS
