The American world map of shame: U.S. Income Inequality Compared To The World

[Fred Sanders]

"Blue countries are more equal than the U.S., red countries are less equal. This map gives you a sense of just how severe economic inequality is in the United States; much higher than in any other developed country, and most developing countries as well."

"Perhaps most damning is China, significantly more equal than the U.S. with a Gini coefficient of 0.415, where the severe income gap has been a source of worsening political instability for almost 20 years. Leagues ahead of the U.S. on income inequality is India, Gini coefficient 0.368, where outrage over corruption and income inequality recently inspired a protest movement that shook the world's largest democracy. (The data for India is from 2004, however; income inequality has likely worsened since then.) Russia, which has seen three popular revolutions in the last century against the caviar-shoveling oligarchs who still run everything, is also less unequal than the U.S., at 0.422 Gini."

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/map-us-ranks-near-bottom-on-income-inequality/245315/

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Meanwhile the Western countries with the greatest inequality send their emissaries to Davos to complain about all the complaining by the Great Unwashed, the severely perplexed Corporate Overlords are puzzled as to why they are not being worshipped throughout the world as Great Men fulfilling their roles, to be "looked up to and admired" even as the ungrateful minions scrabble for insects to eat outside their refugee tents.

Meanwhile Fox News Brings Out The Big Guns to screech about President Obama making income inequality a highlight of tomorrow's SOTU speech.....Fox News wants to end the debate before it begins and things like the maps above sink in with the voters.

Fox's Lou Dobbs: Obama Creating A "Wedge Issue" By Highlighting Income Inequality
Limbaugh: Obama To "Whine And Moan" About Inequality In Order "To Stigmatize The Rich"

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Forty Maps That Explains The World

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/12/40-maps-that-explain-the-world/

One Image That Explains World Income Inequality

[geek tragedy]

1. how do they measure it?

I'm not disputing that the US is pretty terrible on this, but how does India have less inequality?

[Fred Sanders]

2. Income inequality can be measured and compared using something called the Gini coefficient

a century-old formula that measures national economies on a scale from 0.00 to 0.50, with 0.50 being the most unequal. The Gini coefficient is reliable enough that the CIA world factbook uses it. Here's a map of their data, with the most unequal countries in red and the most equal in green.

[geek tragedy]

3. interesting stuff, thanks! nt

[Jim Lane]

11. Correction re Gini coefficient

It doesn't run from 0.00 to 0.50 -- it runs from 0.00 to 1.00.

If everyone in the society has exactly the same amount (complete equality), the Gini coefficient is zero. If one person has everything and no one else has anything (complete inequality), the Gini coefficient is one. While a coefficient of one is more or less inconceivable, the CIA map does show that several countries are above 0.50. In 2009, the UN estimated that the Gini ratio for the entire world was 0.68. (See ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/ak968e/ak968e00.pdf (page 2, Table 1), stating the coefficient as a percentage, so reporting 68 rather than 0.68.) Because of differences between countries, the Gini coefficient for the world is higher than that for almost any individual country.

For a full technical explanation of the Gini coefficient, with a graph that makes it easy to understand, see the Wikipedia article.

[Aldo Leopold]

4. Time to break out the pitchforks and torches!

[badtoworse]

7. How will that help?

[CFLDem]

8. It won't.

But making things right isn't the point.

[DebJ]

5. +1,000,000 awesome thanks, especially

the 40 maps link.

[bkanderson76]

6. The World Map of Shame....and America Lays

in the gutter. Forget the 'breadbasket of the world' crap envisioned and made possible by our grandfathers just a couple generations past. Say hello to the Cesspool America as you have sat idly by in allowing the cigar-gnashing FatCats steal all they wanted because they could. Thanks for the fine article Fred.

[truedelphi]

9. It's a sad day for once free American citizens when

The government officials in charge of propaganda in North Korea don't have to actually lie about how twisted the lives of Americans currently are.

[woo me with science]

10. K&R And absolutely NO PLAN except to make it worse.

It is going to be an ugly, dishonest spectacle, this State of the Union, if it goes the way it has been telegraphed by the President's mouthpieces.

Pretending that raising the minimum wage will make even a dent in inequality, while simultaneously planning the massive, predatory assault of the TPP, will be perhaps the most outrageous, inexcusable con job on the people of the US that we have ever seen.