Fucked Country

Explain these figures to me, g. What does all this mean?

Is the US in a good or a bad position compared with Austria?

The higher the number, the wider the spread of incomes within the population.

Or, more specifically, the wider the difference in average income between quintiles (so the average income for the poorest 20% of families is compared to the average of the richest 20%).

Bling:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2172.html

In the spirit of the opening post, my comment is 7.

blimey mauritius on stuart's link!!

there is surely an inherently misleading statistical artefact here (viz that a mid-range swedish income, say, still not only dwarfs a high-end laotian income in absolute terms, but also in equiv.purchase terms??)

as an index of latent internal conflict it may be revealing (this may also be wishful class-warrior thinking on my part)

Erm...does this mean I should be asking for a pay rise?

mark, true, but then i expect the cost of living is pretty different so i am not sure about the equivalent purchase power part. I mean, I know you can actually live relatively comfortably in some countries on just a few dollars a day (I have heard this about India for example, $5 can cover a decent hotel room and food. But any way, the GINI Index (or so it's called) is useful for putting a number on income distribution in a given country. It's interesting to note that the countries with the lowest numbers often have pretty homogenous populations, but they also (say in the case of the scandinavian countries) have made long term commitments to social systems that promote more even distribution of wealth. My point is really about the US which has the highest (and it's probably higher significantly since 97) of any of the major industrialized nations. The higher the numberm the greater the chance for instability. If you look at the countries higher than the US, they are pretty much all places you wouldn't really want to live. Also, I think the countries with the lower numbers have more resilient economies. I mean, too low may reduce the dynamic ability of the economy to grow but probably helps shield it from serious depressions & stuff. I mean, Japan for instance has a low number. They have been in a 10 year recession, but have been stable and the effects on the general population have been pretty minimal. A 10 year recession would devastate the US i think. I mean, you can already see the effects of the current recession here after 1.5 years or so: Many more news stories about the need for aid to homeless shelters and food pantries, rise in the number of bankruptcies, big spike in unemployment, etc. Though, to be honest, after the weekend, I can't really remember why I put this thing up on ILE in the first place... Oh well...