By Kai Müller
Largest (20)                           1. Brazil 48.75 2. Chile 47.50 3. South Africa 47.3 4. Zimbabwe 46.9 5. Kenya 46.55 6. Tanzania 46.5 7. Botswana 46.20 8. Honduras 44.90 9. Guatemala 44.70 10. Lesotho 44.20 11. Sri Lanka 43.00 12. Senegal 42.8 13. Guinea-Bissau 42.4 14. Panama 42.15 15. Dominican Republic 39.6        16. Mexico 39.35 17. Malaysia 37.90 18. Columbia 37.10 19. Costa Rica 36.45 20. Thailand 36.20 |
Other notable countries (20)    Venezuela 34.20 Singapore 33.50 Jamaica 32.60 The Philippines 32.10 Nigeria 31.3 Hong Kong 31.30 Estonia 31.3 Morocco 30.50 Switzerland 29.80 Vietnam 29.0 Ethiopia 27.50 Cí´te d'Ivoire 26.9 India 26.90 Indonesia 26.75 Australia 25.80 France 25.80 Italy 25.30 Pakistan 25.20 The United States 25.0 China 24.6 |
Smallest (20)                    1. Slovakia 18.2 2. Romania 20.2 3. Sweden 20.80 4. Ukraine 20.8 5. Norway 21.20 6. Poland 21.85 7. Belgium 21.5 8. Hungary 21.7 9. Finland 21.70 10. Latvia 22.1 11. Denmark 22.30 12. Japan 22.40 13. The Netherlands 22.45        14. Israel 23.50 15. Czech Republic 23.5 16. Bangladesh 23.70 17. Germany 23.90 18. Canada 24.10 19. Rwanda 24.40 20. Spain 24.5 |
(measured in what share of the nation's personal income accrues to the top 10% highest earners)
The statistics are from the mid 1990s and cannot be said to apply to any other decade - Where there are two figures after the decimal point, two numbers have been averaged out or the middle one of three takenMost of the "other notable countries" either have one of the biggest or smallest inequalities in their region and that is why they have been selected.
Associated essay:
It is clear from these figures from the World Bank and others
by other bodies (such as one I have seen from the OECD which showed Finland as having the lowest and
the US the highest income inequality in the OECD) that some countries have
managed to take better care of their relatively poor than others (compare Europe
to the Americas) - one might even speculate whether some democracies have done
so little against inequality that they are a sham! Since some countries have
been more responsible and less confrontational than others in going about making
a positive impact, it seems important to discourage countries doing nothing
about their poor so that they may receive the most relief organization dollars
with a new system or awareness. It must also be pointed out that the urban-rural
divide (and neccesary -, as opposed to voluntary expenses) within a country can
greatly exaggerate the inequality.
In addition to vertical inequality, there is often said to also be horizontal inequality. There are no statistics available on the per capita income by religious affiliation in New York, for example. Of many minorities it is well known that they are less well of than the rest of their country (Chiappans, Gypsys, Scottish and Welsh, Aboriginals and the indigenous population of so many other countries). Other minorities however, though they call themselves oppressed, are actually wealthier. It is mainly because they do not wish to fund the development of the rest of the country - in some of these cases there is also some concrete evidence of mistreatment, examples: The Great Lakes Tutsi, Rhodesian Whites, German-American Jews, Indian Sikhs, Fijian Asians and Spanish Basques. It is unknown to the author for certain whether the Sri Lankan Tamils, non-Han Chinese, Slovak and Vojvodine Hungarians, Germanic Romanians and the citizens of Aceh, East Timor and Chechnya before the wars were wealthier or poorer than their surrounding areas. The main explanation of the inequality appears to be the selective passing down of skills, rather than genetic endowment (so much of a self-esteem question that it will not be studied)
While there are many statistics available on black, white and hispanic demographics in the United States, there are very few further breakdowns available (along lines either of religious affiliation or of more specific ethnicity). It is further almost suspicious how unavailable pie-charts are on what almost everybody is interested in: Who owns what share of Ford, GM, GE, ADM, CNN, NYTimes, Macy's, Pepsico, Texaco, Shell, Citibank, Nestle, ... [In turn, we would of course need to know who owns the holding firms that own these companies.] Since this information is so secretive, we cannot even estimate what share of the money I spend, say, on a coke can in Denmark goes back to the US, or how much of the world's media is owned by only three people.
When a person is wealthy, he is not therefore evil. One can never generalize like
this in a truthful way. We can merely observe that those who have more money are
more likely to be aware of tax loop-holes and (having more than enough) are more
taxable. A simple confiscation of half the property of a country's 10 wealthiest
people, for example, would work wonders in financing projects everybody else
benefits from, particularly if the government does not auction off the shares,
but keeps them and only uses the dividends. Another question is what if workers
owned say 40% of their own factory and elected their common spokes-persons on
the shareholders' board, but that is a different debate.
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