Study: Japan Egalitarian, US Fucked

[Samurai_Jerk]

Countries with the Biggest Gaps Between Rich and Poor



The U.N. Development Program recently came out with a report looking, among other things, at income inequality worldwide.

The UNDP ranked countries and regions based on a number of factors, including their Gini coefficient, named for Italian statistician Corrado Gini.

We have listed the world's most advanced economies based on their Gini score, with zero marking absolute equality and 100 absolute inequality. Scandinavian countries, Japan, and the Czech Republic have the least amount of inequality. The U.S. is among the most unequal, but it's not No. 1. To see which economy is, read on.

What I find most interesting is that five of the top ten countries are the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland and the two in Asia are HK and Singapore. All traditionally Anglo or relatively Anglicized nations.

[Billy]

Miami is probably one of the worst places of all. Coconut Grove, a filthy rich area, is directly next to one of the nastiest ghettos I've seen. Ride down the wrong street and you might die.

[Level3]

The study does seem inherently biased in some way against the capitalist Anglosphere where merit-based pay structures are more common.

I wonder if the method of comparing the very top and bottom, but leaving out the middle, is a factor.

A society in which the rich are stinking rich, and the middle class is quite well-off and comfortable, while the lower class may have little job income, but gets government handouts (not counted in the index?) to lead lives that would have been considered luxurious 50 years ago, comes out looking positively evil in this survey, I suspect.

How does the survey handle societies that are truly warped, where less than 0.1% of the population, the ruling class, has seized the only remaining wealth while the masses they rule over starve. Places like NK, or other totalitarian regimes and Third World shitholes.
The top 10% still includes 9.9% of those starving masses. Is a country with only 2 levels, 99.9% being extreme poverty, and the other 0.1% being stinking rich come out as "more egalitarian" than the USA or NZ?

So, just make up some egalitarian index to show the poor are more poor than they "should" be?

Then let's just make every job, from street sweeper to brain surgeon to dishwasher to entrepreneur pay $15 an hour, and everyone will be "equal"?
No point in going to college anymore.

[AlbertSiegel]

Miami is probably one of the worst places of all. Coconut Grove, a filthy rich area, is directly next to one of the nastiest ghettos I've seen. Ride down the wrong street and you might die.

That ghetto is far from the worst I've seen in Miami. Try Overtown, NW 79th or even Little Havana. I would not dare go near any of those places after dark. Still though, while that are in the grove is very well off, I would not call it a filthy rich area though it's not far from one.

[Samurai_Jerk]

How does the survey handle societies that are truly warped, where less than 0.1% of the population, the ruling class, has seized the only remaining wealth while the masses they rule over starve. Places like NK, or other totalitarian regimes and Third World shitholes.

Read more carefully:

We have listed the world's most advanced economies based on their Gini score

[hundefar]

So Japan has a lot less inequality than the US but around the same amount of poverty. Great.