Great income inequality/democracy map of the world. - Wikipedia.org

[applegrove]

"Differences in national income equality around the world as measured by the national Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, and everyone else has zero income). Countries in red tones have societies with more income inequality than those in green tones."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality

[AX10]

1. Recomended!

[Maat]

2. This doesn't look too good.

Even India is doing better than the U.S.!

[BigYawn]

33. India is still suffering the inefficiencies of socialism

It is a pathetic case of everyone making poor wages
rather than a lot of people making good earnings.

When India became independent & soverign nation in 1947,
prime minister Nehru's congress party molded it into a
socialist model. Government ran Railroads, Steel making,
Banks, Insurance, Airline, Phones, and other major industries.

As happens in all government run entities, inefficiency,
beaureaucracy, red tape, nepotism were widespread. A lot
of these have been privatized and India is now experiencing
9% real growth in its economy at this time.

[applegrove]

57. Seems like the democracies and the mixed market ones are doing the best.

[cyberia]

61. asdf

"As happens in all government run entities, inefficiency, beaureaucracy, red tape, nepotism were widespread."

I'm sure you are including national health care systems in this sweeping statement.
Would any of these qualities explain the sparkling success of GM and Ford?

[Jug Or Not]

3. Our wealth...

...has a LOT to do with the natural resources distributed in America--we really got lucky there. Also, having slowish calm rivers like Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi etc. on which to provide transportation when our country was first settled and modernized greatly aided our pop. distrib., commerce, travel, exploration etc.

[applegrove]

5. Yes - North america has benefitted from that. Africa was carved up

like a turkey and suffered. But if you look at South America - they didn't benefit from strong & true democracies. So they are still worse off than the USA. They also had great resource endowments.

[Jug Or Not]

9. Huh?

I was speaking of the great wealth and variety of resources in America--particularly our coal and the ability to make steel--and our rivers which aided travel, marketing, and settlement as our nation developed. Also, our instituting a democratic government (much sooner than others) and a capitalistic economy put us firmly ahead. We have, indeed, been blessed.

[applegrove]

12. In USA & Canada it was capitalist but mixed market economies.

And real democracy which put the middle class first and tried to grow that.

In south America for the longest time - they didn't have real democracy so the resource endowment they did have (at times better than US in the case of Venezuela or Brazil) didn't make for greatness and a good distribution of wealth.

They are now forging ahead with democracy & mixed market economies. And they are becoming more equal all the time. As America the great - heads the other way - towards two classes of people.

[Jug Or Not]

14. America is beautiful!

In the last 5 years, I've lived in Seattle, Denver, and San Diego--and had a chance to travel from the west coast, to the east coast, Niagara Falls to the Gulf and the one thing that struck me most of all was mile after mile after mile of beautiful neighborhoods, beautiful houses--big houses and gorgeous sub-divisions--even the old neighborhoods were nice.

Yes, there were many different income levels--and the cities back east were more careworn because they were older than the cities here in the west--but in no other country we've ever seen or read about have we seen the wealth and prosperity that we have in America.

This is truly paradise on earth!:party: :loveya: :patriot:

[applegrove]

15. So do you want to see the distribution of wealth continue to deteriorate?

Or do you want some mechanism to make sure that all people are represented in government. And that it isn't the people who serve the whims of the elites?

Cause America's distribution of wealth is just heading to the old South American example. And South Americans are following the 20th Century mixed market American model.

A dos si dos.

[Jug Or Not]

16. Do-si-do...

Even in communism, there's still an 'elite'--you just can't talk about it (and there's certainly no redress in the courts). Thus, if I felt our distribution of wealth was deteriorating, I'm not sure HOW I'd feel about it, or choose to do about it.

[applegrove]

17. It is detereorating. How do you feel about it. Richer are richer; poor,

poorer. Middle class is taking the big hit.

[Jug Or Not]

18. LOL!

I'd probably ask my boy John Kerry for some dough--he's the richest man I know (unless Bill Gates does something up this way)...B-)

[applegrove]

19. No. Kerry's wife is the richest person you know. Was married to a

Repuke senator most of her life. Kerry just married her.

Next!

[Jug Or Not]

20. Well....

...absent his own money, maybe Kerry can hit Teddy up for a loan....

[applegrove]

21. Yes - all the senators have money. Oh - but guess what - some of

them who have money vote to pay taxes and to pay for public schools and good governance.

So tell me again - why is it you refuse to discuss the state of the distribution of wealth in your country?

[Jug Or Not]

23. We discussed it just fine.

I told you exactly how I felt--I said, if I felt that was happening, I'm not sure what I would do about righting things.

[applegrove]

24. You said you were not sure how you would feel about the middle

class being gutted in favour of the old South American model if it were true.

Now it seems you sorta don't care. Thanks. That's all I wanted.

By the way - all those beautiful rivers and lakes and farmland.. none of it created by man or an American.

All you have is the democracy you build. The rest of it is somebody elses work.

[Jug Or Not]

25. This is what I ACTUALLY said:

"Even in communism, there's still an 'elite'--you just can't talk about it (and there's certainly no redress in the courts). Thus, if I felt our distribution of wealth was deteriorating, I'm not sure HOW I'd feel about it, or choose to do about it."

[tkmorris]

52. Good Lord

Try harder. This is pathetic.

[applegrove]

54. I gave up. Hopefully the ignore button is attached to some algorithm

and EARLG will be alerted. Cannot imagine we will be seeing much more of our little friend. I've done my part. I've hung back and handed out information. I've read everything they said with the best of my generosity. I've tried to clarify. But discussion is not possible.

:shrug: I tried.

[BigYawn]

34. Kerry's wife Teresa inherited wealth as a heir to the Heinz fortune via

her first husband who owned a great deal of Heinz.

[applegrove]

55. I don't think this person wants information. Just blowing off some freeper

steam. Must have had a very bad day - with CSK funeral being so great and so liberal and so much about transformational experience of love and peace and justice and grace.

[BigYawn]

37. I would want people who strive harder to succeed be able to keep

most of the fruits of their labor. Those who earn
income the easy way such as winning a lottery, speculate
in the stock market, wins a huge award in courts etc.
should be taxed higher than someone who runs a business, employs people, manufactures a product.

If we stiffle hard work and innovation by taxation, we
will all be equal but equally poor also.

[1932]

39. I agree that labor should be encouraged by taxing the fruits of it lighter

than we tax capital gains and dividend income and other sources of unearned income.

However, court awards should not be taxed, I believe. Court awards aren't income. They're meant to put you in the same place you would have been had you not been injured and should be considered after-tax income. Or at least, I think juries should be told to take that into consideration.

[BigYawn]

41. Have you seen some of the humongous awards by juries lately?

The woman who spilled hot coffee on her lap for
basically stupid behavior was awarded a settlement
more than I earned in the last 10 years as a over
worked mechanical engineer.

The people who CHOSE to smoke, inspite of clear warnings
on every cigarette pack and news media publicity about
hazards of smoking, still keep getting millions of
dollars! All it takes is a jury who looks at the
corporation as an evil entity and the smoker as a victim.

[1932]

43. I still don't understand the logic of taxing jury awards.

They're meant to compensate you for your damages. It's not earned income or unearned income.

The woman you got burned by McDonalds suffered 2nd degree burns on her genitals. Wasn't she in her 80s?

McDonalds knew the dangers but kept their coffee too hot because they made millions by killing bacteria at high temperatures which meant they had to change the coffee half as often.

Give that plaintiff a choice and she probably would have preferred not to have her labia scorched, despite the award. And the only way McDonalds was going to turn down the heat to save future people pain was if the jury's award was high enough that it remotely approximated the money they were saving by not having to brew as much coffee.

[BigYawn]

47. I would never ever drive a car with a hot cup of coffee between my legs

To me that is basic common sense. Why should millions
of McDonalds customers pay higher prices, and millions
of McDonalds stock holders be charged for the stupidity
of a woman?

Please remember, the corporations do not pay taxes or
jury awards. It is their customers who end up paying
all higher costs and taxes. Corporation ssimply increase
prices to the consumers.

[1932]

49. Then maybe McDonalds shouldn't have drive-through windows.

Who serves food so hot that it can give you second degree burns?

You're not going to convince me that that decision didn't make sense.

McDonalds customers should be paying extra if that's what it costs for McDonalds to serve food that isn't dangerous.

[1932]

50. BTW, before you get too distracted, what does that have to do with taxing

jury awards.

I'm still interested in discussing that.

What's your argument?

You just don't like plaintiffs and don't think they should get a windfall for their suffering?

I think that giving the government the windfall profit on negligence might create a bad incentive for legislatures to avoid imposing regulations that would reduce civil wrongs. If the government were a profit participant in civil awards, they'd probably like to see more negligence.

[cyberia]

62. Have you visited Western Europe recently?

I live there. Every time I visit the States, I get the impression of going to a relatively poor country. The GNP per capita is higher in the US than in most of Western Europe, but it is so poorly distributed that there are vastly more poverty-stricken, overworked and undernourished people than in Western Europe. That is what the graphic at the beginning of this thread shows.

[1932]

28. Sweden's income inequality, by the way, is among highest in world, BEFORE

taxes, but is among the lowest in the world AFTER taxes.

I like to think that it's the fact that infrastructure (including health care and education) is so well-funded through progressive income tax that allows people to make so much money.

Would you rather have a society like Sweden's where taxes prevent huge inequality, but allow everyone the ability to achieve a great deal? Or would you like a society like ours where the rich are lightly taxed, and there's a ton of misery, and many people have no chance at any kind of dignified life?

[BigYawn]

35. Why are then more people breaking the doors down to immigrate here

to USA than they are even to Sweden?

[1932]

36. Don't understand your question/point. Sweden has a lot of immigrants, BTW.

I don't know what it was in my post that inspired you to write your post. Do you dispute the data? It's from the book The Health of Nations. Check it out.

I guess we need to see the stats which are informing your opinon so that we know what we're talking about.

However, it might be a safe guess to say that if Mexico were next door to Sweden and not the US, and you could walk to Sweden without a peso to your name, maybe more people would immigrate to Sweden than to the US.

[BigYawn]

38. Sweden has a higher (10%+) unemployment rate, a higher suicide

rate, worse climate, much higher taxes than the US.
No wonder people who want to work their way into
higher incomes prefer coming to US over Sweden.
Ofcourse Sweden attracts a lot of people looking for
the high level of handouts to the unemployed.

I am not at all disputing your data or your post.
All I want to try and say that without the incentive
to keep the fruits of your labor, you destroy the
will to work hard and to innovate.

[1932]

40. Sweden has problems like all countries, but it has a high level of happi-

ness.

They do very well on measures of contentment, despite having alcohol problems, not much daylight during the winter, and a society which encourages conformity at some levels.

And, again, I strongly believe that one reason Swedes have high income inequality before taxes is because they do tax high incomes progressively and reinvest that money into infrastructure which allows all the diamonds in the rough, whether they're the children of immigrants or the working class, an opportunity to shine.

Wouldn't you rather have a society which allows people to realize their potential that way even if the cost is progressively taxing that income so that everyone has the same chance?

[BigYawn]

44. I am all for free college education to all those who can keep their

grades. I just can't see the good in over taxing those
who earn by work and then awarding more money to those
who do not try as hard.

Incidentally I was married to a Swedish woman and have
spent time there, and seen it all first hand. Sweden
is a very beautiful country, very modern and has low
crime rates. But I would have no chance of making it
into higher middle class there no matter how hard I
worked.

[1932]

46. Look at Sweden. Their society creates a great deal of wealth for everyone

by taxing high levels of income progressively and reinvesting it so that society can continue to create wealth.

Tax the wealthy lightly, stop investing in education and infrastructure, and you'll find that society can no longer build a middle class out of people who don't already have capital, and you'll find that one of the few routes to getting wealth is being born wealthy. You'll aslo see a society that stops creating wealth. Wealth actually shrinks, but it circulates among fewer and fewer people, so the elite feel like they're still wealthy and are quite content as society decays. (This is the sort of thing Jared Diamond writes about in his new book.)

Incidentally, in Sweden -- I shall repeat -- they have among the highest after-tax income equality in the world. I don't know why you'd be so worried about making it into the upper middle class in Sweden. The point of that society is that almost everyone has the chance to make it into the middle class. I also don't believe that you couldn't go to Sweden and work hard and reap the rewards of your wealth. I do think that you might want to readjust what you think the rewards of hard work are. Living in a functioning society in which people are content and can get a year of paternity and maternity leave, and not live desperate miserable lives, and that your neighbors get this too -- those might have to become things you value.

[1932]

42. On what are you basing your theory that people who want to achieve high

income levels chose the US over Sweden?

Don't you think most immigrants chose the US over Sweden not because they're thinking about the 1 in a million chance of becoming a millionaire, but because they're thinking of the 99,999,999 chance in a million of at least making $5 an hour? In other words, it's the guaranteed low end of the scale that they're coming here for.

Other reasons immigrants chose the US, I'm sure, are because there are already immigrant communities (impoverished though they might be) in many US communities which welcome them and support them. And as far as picking the US over Sweden, I'm so sure that for a vast majority, it's cheaper to get to the US than to Sweden.

[BigYawn]

45. My brothers-in-law in Sweden have never made it out of

middle class, whereas poor old me, who emigrated to
the US as a student with $100 in his pocket is now
almost in the very high end of middle class.

The main difference? Taxes!!!

[1932]

48. Maybe your brother in law is lucky to be in the middle class.

How do you think he'd do in the US?

(BTW, I'm always suspicious of samples sizes of only two people.)

And you know what low taxes buy you in the US? A society which shifts the burdens on to the poor and off the wealthy. And you might like this today, but I guarantee you that if we keep going in the direction we're headed, you'd have to be a ghoul to feel content with your wealth while looking around at the misery it causes others. And that's if you even have any wealth left when society falls apart thanks to the income inequality we have here.

We're all better off when we're all better off. That's a fact.

[cyberia]

64. Re: unemployment rates

Make sure that you aren't comparing apples to oranges. Here's how it works in France, for example:

When you get to about 60, you can usually make a deal with your employer to get fired, pick up a hefty (1 or 2 years salary) leaving bonus, then go on unemployment 'til you are 65 and your pension kicks in.

The employer gains, since you are expensive and he can replace you with someone young and cheap. You gain, because you are free, free, free! You show up in the unemployment statistics, but nobody expects that you will ever work again. Think of it as a subsidy to your employer to get you off his hands.

The upshot is that there are a lot of older folks on the unemployment rolls who are just waiting for retirement and living quite well, thank you very much.

[cyberia]

63. As Justice Louis Brandeis said,

"We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."

[mdmc]

65. welcome to DU!

peace and low stress!

[unblock]

4. great. not very useful if you're RED-GREEN COLORBLIND

%$%$#@%#%$!!!!!

:grr: :grr: :grr:

[applegrove]

7. So what color are your flaming mad smilies? LOL

[htuttle]

8. Yup, same problem here

I find a pair of 3D glasses helps tremendously in cases like this.



Here's a pattern to make your own:
http://terraweb.wr.usgs.gov/TRS/kids/glasses.html

[skids]

26. Don't you guys have those filters?

I suppose they can be a hassle to carry around.

Actually I'm surprized there's no software package or firefox plugin for you guys to adjust gamma with keystrokes....

[MissMarple]

6. Among the democratic industrialized nations, we don't look so good.

Japan is dark green, like Greenland.

[maxsolomon]

10. Greenland is AWESOME!

they're just the best!

all 15,000 of them.

[mim]

27. Greenland is a part of Denmark

and if you look very closely at Europe you'll see that Denmark is a little dark-green dot.

[depakid]

60. stop making sense!

you're an American, dammit!

We're supposed to be moving into the pink...

There are going to be a lot of very unhappy former middle class over the next decade.

[flashdebadge]

11. Based on the explanation of the table, you're all reading this wrong.

The color is indicative of the spread of the income over the entire country. In other words countries that are colored dark red have a lot of poor people and only a few upper income people (ie. the president of that country) We all know that many of the South American and African countries have dictators that get aid from other countries but many of them don't use the money to help the people. They keep it themselves. This the is reason for the hugh imbalance of income and thus the color red or pink. As the income among a population evens out its color lightens (ie Greenland)

[applegrove]

13. No - Dark green is the best - then to the yellow, yellows to orange, to

red then to maroon. You are reading it wrong.

[1932]

29. I don't think there are many dictators left in South America, by the way.

[applegrove]

56. No - but the 20th century (recent history) is filled with leaders who

were out only for the elites. And inequality like that takes years to turn around.

Right now they are very democratic. Why they hate Bush so much. They've had to fight awfully hard for the democracies they have today. And they remember that.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

22. Proud to put it over the top for greatest.

good find.

[magellan]

30. So our income disparity is on a par with Iran and China

AND growing. What a disgrace.

[SupplyConcerns]

31. I didn't know that Japan was so good on this front

[1932]

32. Thank the Marshall Plan for that.

Japan was run by a handful of families before WW2. The Marshall Plan, among other things, limited land ownership to four acres per person. (Castro's land redistribution program in Cuba wasn't even that ambitions -- IIRC, Castro limited ownership to 1000 acres per person.)

Incidentally, one of the consequesnces of income equality is good health among citizens. Japan has one of the highest rates of smoking in the world, but one of the lowest rates of heart disease. Income equality has such a powerful impact on national health that it can overcome very bad health habits.

[T Town Jake]

53. 'fraid not. The Marshall Plan applied only to post war Europe...

...Japan didn't get a dime under that program.

You should read more, and post less.

[1932]

58. Oh really?

I think it's fair to use "Marshall Plan" as shorthand for the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, and it looks like the ECA was extended to include Japan, and it looks like Japan got a lot of dimes from the US after 1945. Furthermore, the US did implose land reform measures, and many other measures on Japan to undo fascist imperialism, and I also think it's fair to use "Marshall Plan" to refer collectively to those reforms. I'm not the first to do that.


Congress enacted the Marshall Plan as part of the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948. The plan’s technical assistance program invited 24,000 Western Europeans (and later, thousands of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans) to the U.S. for business training.

http://www.ccisf.org/pep/marshall_plan.htm

Japan, the World War II adversary of the U.S. in the Far East, had to be rescued from the threat of communist revolution. Under the administrative leadership of Douglas MacArthur and American economic aid, it was put back on its feet. The same consideration applied to South Korea and Taiwan. The former had communist North Korea as its neighbor. The latter was considered by China to be a province. In addition, both North Korea and China were allies of the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the Truman Doctrine had to apply both to Western Europe and the Asian Far East. Logically, the Far East had to have its own version of a Marshall Plan.

Secretary of State George Marshall said the following about Soviet aggression in February 1948:

“Thus, the Soviet effort to fill these, (Germany, Japan, Greece, Turkey), power vacuums is not primarily a military effort. It is aggression, if you will. But it is not horizontal aggression, accomplished by the movement of armed forces laterally over frontiers. It is vertical aggression, accomplished by the use of forces within the victim countries, communist parties and others who rise up to seize control in those countries and to exercise it on behalf of the international communist movement. This technique, namely the use of factions within a country to gain control over that country, is referred to by various names. When Hitler used it, it was called the technique of “infiltration and penetration." It can, perhaps, best be described as indirect aggression.”
To make the Marshall Plan acceptable to the governments of so many countries, several unique sub-plans were offered by some countries to resolve local issues. One was the proposal of the Schuman Plan, which was the basis for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) established in 1952. Six countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany, pooled its coal and steel resources. Another was the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) Treaty, designed to ensure the establishment of the basic installations necessary for the development of nuclear energy in the Community, and to ensure that all users in the Community receive a regular and equitable supply of ores and nuclear fuels.

In many ways, the Marshall Plan satisfied both those who wanted American foreign policy to be generous and idealistic and those who demanded practical solutions. It helped to feed the starving and shelter the homeless, and at the same time helped stem the spread of communism and put the European economy back on its feet.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1852.html

Still, a remarkable number of nations used this Cold War development assistance money wisely, sometimes with spectacular results. The developing countries of East Asia, which were among the first to side with the U.S. during the cold war (especially South Korea and Taiwan), received generous early development assistance, and began growing quickly as a result. During the years following 1945, Taiwan and South Korea together received roughly $18.6 billion in U.S. economic and military aid overall, plus sound technical and policy advice. The money and advice did not go to waste, as South Korea and Taiwan embraced social policy reforms (especially land reforms), made large investments in the health and education of their own people, put sound macroeconomic policies in place, and committed themselves to international trade. American agriculture was eventually the beneficiary. As these nations industrialized rapidly and as incomes grew, they increased their consumption of food and soon emerged as good customers for the U.S. farm sector. Taiwan went from being a net exporter of cereals in the 1950s to a $2.1 billion market for U.S. farm products today. South Korea is now a $2.3 billion market for U.S. farm exports. Japan, which also received generous assistance after 1945 (and which President Kennedy was still calling a "developing country" as late as 1962), is now a $9.3 billion market for U.S. agricultural exports.

http://www.ncfap.org/reports/trade/IDTRT01T.html

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

51. Great post. Reccomended. n/t

[Blue_Tires]

59. wow...we're on the same level as Bolivia?

Brazil needs a little work, too...WAY out of kilter