Not sure, but if I was judging the context of the question by the picture on the left, a more apt question might be, if poor, which of those countries would you rather live? For me it would be a toss-up between UK and the US. US wins in Human Development Index but it one place behind the UK in the Human Poverty Index. None of the other countries in the list are ranked.
Income inequality is a pretty meaningless measurement between countries.
Agreed. I'd choose the U.K. or U.S. also, for a lot of reasons: language, food, customs, freedom, and also because, as you say, if poor, you'd be much better off than the poor in the other countries.
I also agree that income inequality can have distorted meaning, if looked at the wrong way, between countries.
Other than a just a game (usually my main purpose), I was trying to show how legitimate or not is the wall street protest. (It's Wall Street occupation photo.) Typically citizens revolt when there is large discrepancy of income from people around them—their neighbors. (I, actually, have problems with comparing oneself with the Joneses, but that is typically what people do.) I found it surprising that the U.S. had a bigger income discrepancy than a lot of countries where we typically think there are huge disparities, such as India, Iran, Nigeria, Russia.
Actually, the countries with the smallest disparities are places where you may want to live (if you knew the language, customs, etc,) like Sweden, Norway, Austria, Finland, Germany. They have almost half the inequality of the U.S. By the way, Pete, Ireland is pretty good with a value of 29.3 compared to the U.S. of 45.
WARNING! SPOILERS! To give the answers (I tried to make it easy), there are 2: South Africa (obviously) is second to last of 134 countries with a score of 65, and (also pretty obvious) Haiti with a score of 59.2.
The U.S. is far down the inequality side—96 out of 134 countries. The most uniform is Sweden, not surprisingly, and the worst is Namibia.
Pete says: Income inequality is a pretty meaningless measurement between countries.
We've argued about this before and I suppose that we'll both go to our graves disagreeing about wealth inequality.
This is something one could write a book on. But here are just a few points. For one, concentrations of wealth at the top destroys the American meritocracy. As the Occupy Wall Street people point out, even for those with college degrees there are few jobs. Since 2000, young people with college educations—except those who go to elite colleges and graduate schools—have seen their wages decline. Except Britain, those industrialized countries with lower Gini indices all have greater upward mobility than the US. Also, as wealth becomes more concentrated more people will come into wealth as the result of inheritance rather than effort. No merit in that at all.
Secondly, concentrations of wealth mean concentrations of power. Look at the incredibly disproportionate share of power the wealthy have. Somehow they have convinced the public that the way we simplify our incredibly complicated tax system is by enacting a flat tax. If you can believe the movie "Inside Job," the Obama administration’s financial reforms are weak at best, and the power of the banking industry has been able to block any regulation of the practices of ratings agencies, lobbyists, or the banking industry itself. The banking industry has become so powerful, there's no way to effectively regulate it.
Myk, my comment mentioned nothing about how US inequality is destroying the country (another debate). My quote, "Income inequality is a pretty meaningless measurement between countries." this quote included,"between countries" since Jim's interesting quiz was the comparison of US inequality versus other countries.
So let's say one country, the rich have 100 billion dollars and the poor a measly 1 million dollars each, while the poor of another country has 1 dollar and the rich have 2 dollars. One country has an inequality of 2 fold the other has a 100000 fold difference, which country would you like to live in?
I was saying a better method to compare countries was the development and poverty index created by the UN.
Ironically, Jim pointed out that Ireland has a far lower inequality rate and yet their social/political environment is far more volatile (they literally have a murder running for president) than the US, as with most of those countries on the list.
5 comments:
We're just the match.
Not sure, but if I was judging the context of the question by the picture on the left, a more apt question might be, if poor, which of those countries would you rather live? For me it would be a toss-up between UK and the US. US wins in Human Development Index but it one place behind the UK in the Human Poverty Index. None of the other countries in the list are ranked.
Income inequality is a pretty meaningless measurement between countries.
Agreed. I'd choose the U.K. or U.S. also, for a lot of reasons: language, food, customs, freedom, and also because, as you say, if poor, you'd be much better off than the poor in the other countries.
I also agree that income inequality can have distorted meaning, if looked at the wrong way, between countries.
Other than a just a game (usually my main purpose), I was trying to show how legitimate or not is the wall street protest. (It's Wall Street occupation photo.) Typically citizens revolt when there is large discrepancy of income from people around them—their neighbors. (I, actually, have problems with comparing oneself with the Joneses, but that is typically what people do.) I found it surprising that the U.S. had a bigger income discrepancy than a lot of countries where we typically think there are huge disparities, such as India, Iran, Nigeria, Russia.
Actually, the countries with the smallest disparities are places where you may want to live (if you knew the language, customs, etc,) like Sweden, Norway, Austria, Finland, Germany. They have almost half the inequality of the U.S. By the way, Pete, Ireland is pretty good with a value of 29.3 compared to the U.S. of 45.
WARNING! SPOILERS!
To give the answers (I tried to make it easy), there are 2: South Africa (obviously) is second to last of 134 countries with a score of 65, and (also pretty obvious) Haiti with a score of 59.2.
The U.S. is far down the inequality side—96 out of 134 countries. The most uniform is Sweden, not surprisingly, and the worst is Namibia.
Pete says: Income inequality is a pretty meaningless measurement between countries.
We've argued about this before and I suppose that we'll both go to our graves disagreeing about wealth inequality.
This is something one could write a book on. But here are just a few points. For one, concentrations of wealth at the top destroys the American meritocracy. As the Occupy Wall Street people point out, even for those with college degrees there are few jobs. Since 2000, young people with college educations—except those who go to elite colleges and graduate schools—have seen their wages decline. Except Britain, those industrialized countries with lower Gini indices all have greater upward mobility than the US. Also, as wealth becomes more concentrated more people will come into wealth as the result of inheritance rather than effort. No merit in that at all.
Secondly, concentrations of wealth mean concentrations of power. Look at the incredibly disproportionate share of power the wealthy have. Somehow they have convinced the public that the way we simplify our incredibly complicated tax system is by enacting a flat tax. If you can believe the movie "Inside Job," the Obama administration’s financial reforms are weak at best, and the power of the banking industry has been able to block any regulation of the practices of ratings agencies, lobbyists, or the banking industry itself. The banking industry has become so powerful, there's no way to effectively regulate it.
Myk, my comment mentioned nothing about how US inequality is destroying the country (another debate). My quote, "Income inequality is a pretty meaningless measurement between countries." this quote included,"between countries" since Jim's interesting quiz was the comparison of US inequality versus other countries.
So let's say one country, the rich have 100 billion dollars and the poor a measly 1 million dollars each, while the poor of another country has 1 dollar and the rich have 2 dollars. One country has an inequality of 2 fold the other has a 100000 fold difference, which country would you like to live in?
I was saying a better method to compare countries was the development and poverty index created by the UN.
Ironically, Jim pointed out that Ireland has a far lower inequality rate and yet their social/political environment is far more volatile (they literally have a murder running for president) than the US, as with most of those countries on the list.
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