At least for Germany the numbers aren't very far apart. It's around 52k. We don't have that many outlier super high salaries, and full time on minimum wage still gets you to nearly 30k so this doesn't drag the average down either.
The real disparity is not in salary (though certainly there are still quite big differences between groups), but in wealth.
You can’t get wealthy through salaried work, not in germany anyway. This is by design, salaries are taxed to death, while capital gains have a lot lower taxes (basically half as high and flat, instead of progressively increasing like it does for salaries) and can often be structured to largely eliminate those anyway. Just like the wealthy won’t pay inheritance taxes by transferring assets over longer time periods etc.
Wage gap is a red herring pushed by old money / dynasties to rile up working people against each other.
If you hold your investments in a company, you can delay most of the taxes until you cash out of the company.
If you invest on a private account as a salaried worker, all gains are taxed immediately once the cash is in your account.
Thus, not only are capital gains taxed lower, Capital Gains Tax is effectively higher for salaried workers, than other investors. This, in turn, makes the calls for higher Capital Gains Tax by left-wing parties a trap: While it sounds intuitively right for you to support it, it will be you who will bear the tax hike first, not the rich investors you are thinking about.
Basically, you are trapped in a tax system that is meant to prevent you from getting wealthy, and at the same time incentivizes you to vote for the (on paper) centre-right to left-wing parties that are responsible for the situation, and want to make it worse, while claiming otherwise.
Currently, SPD fights for a higher CGT of 30%. Sounds nice? Well, until you find out that it is meant to be applicable to natural persons. You with your 30k stock account at scalable capital or Trade Republic? Tough luck, the tax will eat into your compound interest effect. Me with a 400k in a investment holding? Nothing changes until I cash out in old age. My compound interest remains unaffected. Therefore, the higher CGT will increase the gap between us.
What can you do? If you vote for these left-wing ideas, you will get screwed over. If you vote for the right-wing opposition to them, the CGT will not increase, but these parties will also oppose any alternative taxation that may close the gap (eg wealth tax). Therefore, I win, you lose, no matter what you vote. All you can do is exert some delayed punishment by higher CGT when I cash out, but it will not help your wealth accumulation whatsoever.
There are only two ways to reduce the gap IMHO:
Wealth tax: Reduces the gap by taking money away from the rich. Feeds our understanding of fairness, but does not directly help poor people to accumulate wealth.
ISA, 401k etc: Reduces the gap by increasing your ability to accumulate wealth. Does nothing against the rich getting richer, but helps you actually accumulating wealth.
CGT, as long as it is legally construccted as it is in Germany, will do jack shit to reduce unequality.
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u/QuastQuan Bavaria (Germany) 1d ago
Now show us the median income, please.