5 ms·
From your link, GINI of Canada and Tajikistan is the same or Finland and Azerbaijan. Totalitarian states like Belarus or Kazakhstan have one of the lowest GINIs
by betaby 6y ago
From your link, GINI of Canada and Tajikistan is the same or Finland and Azerbaijan. Totalitarian states like Belarus or Kazakhstan have one of the lowest GINIs in the world, now I question gini usefulness even more.
- arcticbull 6y agoI assumed you realized we were constraining ourselves to places with a High or Very High HDI. If nobody has any money at all, would you not say inequality is low? If everyone in Tajikistan has $5 except the president, Emomali Rahmon, is inequality not low? I suspect you are looking for a pairing of HDI and Gini, which factors in both the development (and hence the standard of living) and the inequality. Sweden: (Gini: 0.25, HDI: 0.933), France: (Gini: 0.31, HDI: 0.901), Canada: (Gini: 0.33, HDI: 0.926), USA: (Gini: 0.48, HDI: 0.924), South Africa: (Gini: 0.65, HDI: 0.709). Now, Tajikistan has an HDI of 0.66 ("medium"), and Azerbaijan 0.756 ("high"). Kazakhstan might surprise you, the HDI is 0.817 ("very high"). The standard of living there is actually good, in spite of what you may have seen on Borat - incidentally filmed in Romania. Almaty's been on my list of places to visit for a long time :) [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaty
- dnautics 6y ago> If everyone in Tajikistan has $5 except the president That distribution will yield a very high gini coefficient of very close to 1.
- tobinfricke 6y agoNo, it yields a Gini coefficient very close to zero. The Gini coefficient is defined as 1/2 the mean absolute difference considering all pairs of households: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient A group of people where everyone has the same income as a Gini coefficient of exactly zero. Adding a single outlier will increase it a little. A group of 1001 with 1000 people earning $1 and one person earning $100 has a Gini coefficient of 0.09.
- thomasahle 6y ago>> If everyone in Tajikistan has $5 except the president > That distribution will yield a very high gini coefficient of very close to 1. It yields (n-1)|5-p|/(2n(5(n-1)+p)) which is about p/(5n+p). So it depends on whether the president (p) has $10 or $n^2.
- dnautics 6y agoindeed. If everyone in tajikistan has $5 except the president, who has $1, the gini coefficient will be different.
- passerby1 6y ago> Borat - incidentally filmed in Romania Romania: Gini: 0.36, HDI: 0.828 HDI is close to Kazakhstan, actually
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoTrives of neanderthals were very equal too. Obviously you have to compare apples to apples
- etothepii 6y agoRead "Sapiens" 35 hour working week as a hunter gather is far preferable to the 60 + home chores of the homo softwaricus.
- sokoloff 6y agoI would way rather program 60 hours a week than live as the hunter-gatherers did.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoI am not sure, in there own world some tribes might have been far happier than 95% of society is today
- dantheman 6y agoThat is until they die from a simple infection.
- geodel 6y agoSeems better than perennial back pain from sitting long hours and getting brain fried from implementing same logic of micro-service 1000th time for a 'challenging' project.
- winston_smith 6y agoGo try it and let us know how it works out
- 6y ago
- throwaway45349 6y agoIn totalitarian states, everyone is equally poor.
- webmaven 6y ago> In totalitarian states, everyone is equally poor. Not quite. In totalitarian states, typically everyone's income is fairly equal. Wealth, however, is often another matter. In the soviet Union, party apparatchiks often had very nice dachas to live in, fancy cars, exclusive shopping venues with imported goods, vacations abroad, etc. But these things weren't necessarily purchased with disposable income, per-se. At least not officially.
- mc32 6y agoI would quibble with the "fancy cars" part. Only the nomenklatura got government owned fancy cars and other perks --that reverted to the state if they lost the position. So it was a kind of state wealth that you temporarily had custody over.
- webmaven 6y agoTo some extent, many of the "fancy cars" and other perks of capitalistic wealth are also things that one has only temporary access to by virtue of one's position. Without the position and the attached income, these can revert to the bank or other creditor.
- ant6n 6y agoAfter the wall came down and the GDR collapsed, East Germans were surprised how simple the life of the highest government functionaries was. They had a small gated community, with a level of luxury (except perhaps for extra labor) which is comparable to North American middle class: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldsiedlung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldsiedlung