I am not sure what your graph is meant to prove. That the top 10% seem well able to maximise their gains under both US and Russian systems, is not disputed. I am not suggesting that when it comes to wealth inequality either the US or Russia are holier than the other. Nor am I suggesting that US political leaders or top 10% are not criminally engaged, though in general the dubiousness of their activities often seems less overt - their corruption is more subtle, perhaps, and has indeed, as you point out, been quite successful in their terms over recent years.
But I trust you are not suggesting that US criminality such as
Castro poisoning attempts, Air America, Iran Contra, Islamic Mujaheddin, etc.
is in any way behind the increase in wealth of the US top 10% as indicated by your graph. Putin actively uses his self-created top 10% for nefarious financial purposes and has done so for many years. It is one of the two objectives of his rule. The other being “make Russia respected again”. That he uses the former to support the latter is clear, and is his chosen route. He could have made Russia great again via genuine economic and political reform and developed an economy to rival any other. He did not - he chose the route of authoritarian self-enrichment and personal power. Until Agent Orange, the US did not, at least, have borderline or overtly criminal leaders - it simply pursued an economic system designed to entrench wealth where it existed, to the detriment of places it did not. The US has not yet decided to close down the press/broadcasters who try to hold the establishment to account and kill reporters and others who cross it, merely for doing so or merely for revenge. Nor to so abuse property rights as to make overnight billionaires. The US state does engage in criminality, I am in no doubt. The Russian state IS a criminal state. There is a difference. And it is an effective one, looking at the relative slopes of the US and Russian lines in your graph.
(And France understands the civil value of taxation and well-regulated markets/economy. Tax IS the price we pay for civilisation and for all its faults France, in my experience, is a rather more civilised country than the US, which in turn is still somewhat more civilised than Russia. Taxation, regulation, and property rights are likely key pieces in the overall puzzle.)
