Theory of Revolution in Incomes, a theory of bourgeois economics, a component of the theory of people’s capitalism (see Theory of People’s Capitalism) which was widely publicised in the 1950s. As it basically suggests, given economic development and the ensuing growth in per capita income, the national income is distributed more uniformly, i. e., the share of the rich strata decreases while that of the poor increases accordingly. This conception is employed to propagate the myth of an allembracing "middle class" which includes workers, employees, farmers, and owners of small businesses. In this way the illusion is created that those who exploit and those who are exploited have common goals and interests. Bourgeois economists claim that the incomes level out because of progressive taxation. In fact, regulations in capitalist countries enable the capitalists to conceal much of their profits (for instance, premature write-offs, percentage depletion, the possibility to fractionalise income to reduce the progressive taxation, etc.). In the USA, the interest paid on State and municipal bonds, some income coming from dividends, contributions to charities and election campaigns, the interests paid on personal loans, etc., are not taxable or can be deducted from taxable income. Official statistics show the falsity of the claim that there has been a radical change in income distribution in the developed capitalist countries. In the USA, a country of great social contrasts, five per cent of the richest families received about 16 per cent of all income in 1972. At the same time 25 million lived below the poverty line and 12 million more were right on that level. The world economic crisis of the mid-1970s exposed the deepest class contradictions of the capitalist economic system, and resulted in a dramatic drop in working people’s incomes and living standards. Permanent mass unemployment, ongoing inflation, declining real wages and more intense labour are manifestations of hard life of great numbers of working people. The bankruptcy of this theory has been 371 acknowledged by bourgeois scientists themselves. Thus Joan Robinson, the British bourgeois economist said that economic growth, being unable to solve the problem of relative poverty, leads to greater absolute poverty. The theory of revolution in incomes draws a veil over the antagonistic nature of distribution under capitalism, and fails to trace it back to private ownership of the means of production; it creates the illusion that poverty and social inequality can be eliminated within the framework of capitalist production relations.