.533 isn't a girl's softball hitting percentage

Quite a lot of people in Hong Kong like to say that there is no need for the city to have Universal Suffrage. A typical argument runs like this: "Hong Kong's economy is growing just fine; why are we making such a big fuss when there aren't any problems?"

Tom Legg puts it nicely,

when the folks in Zhongnanhai screw up, the ones to be punished for the mistake are anybody but the folks in Zhongnanhai.

There's also the other tiny problem of increasing income inequality

The wealth gap between the rich and poor has widened further with the overall Gini coefficient, representing income disparity, at its highest since the figures were recorded. ...Last year the figure stood at a record high of 0.533, compared with 0.518 in 1996.

For comparison,

While most developed European nations tend to have Gini coefficients between 0.24 and 0.36, the United States Gini coefficient is above 0.4, indicating that the United States has greater inequality. Using the Gini can help quantify differences in welfare and compensation policies and philosophies. However it should be borne in mind that the Gini coefficient can be misleading when used to make political comparisons between large and small countries (see criticisms section).

Our new Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, says this:

Ceajer Chan, however, said last year's figure, with taxation and social benefits considered, had dropped to 0.475, taking it as an "indication for a reduction in the spread of income disparity."

While it may be true that disparity among the population's real income (after tax/benefits) is less than that of the gross income (before tax/benefits), that definitely does not infer automatically that income disparity has reduced.

The comparison of figures over the years (2006 being the highest since we started collecting data in 1971) would not have any siginificance unless calculated in the same manner, and I would hope to believe that the Census Department has considered gross income all along and not switch somewhere on the road.

Hong Kong's tax code hasn't changed dramatically in recent years (to my knowledge), so it seems ludicrous for Ceajer to claim such a thing. No wonder all the legislators launched fire at him after the assertion.

So is this really a problem for Hong Kong? Let's look at the data:

For individual workers, the median monthly income for the two lowest groups, or the poorest 20 percent of Hong Kongers, fell by 12.5 percent to HK$3,500.

That translates to almost 1,400,000 people whose income fell in the past year.

We believe in a free market and free trade because we believe that economics is not a zero-sum game. Some people can fare better without making anyone else worse off. That's the cornerstone of trusting in a free economy. I'm fine with rich people getting richer as long as the poor people aren't getting poorer, but it looks like they are.

The hope that hard work will eventually get us somewhere (Hong Kong's "American Dream) only survives when the belief is true. Don't screw it up, government. And don't just tell me it's a short-run thing and sit back. It's the worst we've got for 37 years. Do something about it.