9/10    http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sz.html
        CIA publishes statistics on other countries. According to this
        Switzerland's "Distribution of Family Income Gini Index" is 33.1,
        which is higher than socialistic Denmark (<25), but less than
        capitalistic United States (+45), and much less than corrupted
        Brazil (61). However their poverty line is "NA." Ditto with
        Denmark and other evil socialistic countries. What does
        that mean, that they don't have any poor people? That is
        preposterous. All countries should have poor people.
           \- gini coeficient is a measure of distribution. are you interested
              in absolute numbers? you can also look at the hum dev reports
              from the undp. see e.g. http://hdr.undp.org if you are a
              serious and have a somewhat specific inquiry, you can mail me.
              i dont know much about europe but know a little bit about
              LDCs. obviously what is the poverty line in the US is
              more than a order of mag higher than two global poverty
              numbers you often see: # living on less than $1/day and
              $2/day. just like for very wealthy persons, salary doesnt
              characterize their income and wealth well, at the low end
              cash income may not characterize people's circumstances
              well, e.g. in agricultural sector, e.g. somebody who makes
              an appreciable part of their income in say goat milk.
              latin am countries are sort of the std example of high gini
              coef countries [not including african kleptocracies] . some
              studies suggest there may be a trade off between growth rate and
              gini coef ... it make make sense to trade off some more
              inequality for greater growth. BTW, there are a lot of
              statistical factors that hidden in this one number ... so
              you cant necessarily compare them easily [like can have same
              gini coef with diff shape of lorentz curve. and same underlying
              income distribution with quartile sampleing vs dectile sampling
              will give you diff values].
              \_ This is too dense. Can I just say something to the effect
                 that the lower the Gini value, the more that the country
                 cares about poor people? Most the social/comu countries have
                 low Gini whereas evil 3rd world countries like Brazil have
                 extremely high Givi values. The exception is USA, which has
                 one of the highest Gini values even though it's not a 3rd
                 world country.
                 \- "how much a country cares about poor people" cannot
                    be reasonably captured in a number. even the south
                    african state under apartheid may have spent more
                    on the per capita health of black people than per capita
                    public health expenditures in say india but india had
                    various affirmative action programs in the political
                    sphere which didnt exist in SA. you might want to look
                    at Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom. AKS has written
                    a lot more on this kind of thing but some of it is a
                    little "dense". at equal PPP would you rather live in
                    cuba or the US?
        \_ We used to, but we turned them all into soylent green for all
           the poor people in Denmark.  -John
           \- gini coeficient is a measure of distribution. are you interested
              in absolute numbers? you can also look at the hum dev reports
              from the undp. see e.g. http://hdr.undp.org if you are a
              serious and have a somewhat specific inquiry, you can mail me.
              i dont know much about europe but know a little bit about
              LDCs. obviously what is the poverty line in the US is
              more than a order of mag higher than two global poverty
              numbers you often see: # living on less than $1/day and
              $2/day. just like for very wealthy persons, salary doesnt
              characterize their income and wealth well, at the low end
              cash income may not characterize people's circumstances
              well, e.g. in agricultural sector, e.g. somebody who makes
              an appreciable part of their income in say goat milk.
              latin am countries are sort of the std example of high gini
              coef countries [not including african kleptocracies] . some
              studies suggest there may be a trade off between growth rate and
              gini coef ... it make make sense to trade off some more
              inequality for greater growth. BTW, there are a lot of
              statistical factors that hidden in this one number ... so
              you cant necessarily compare them easily [like can have same
              gini coef with diff shape of lorentz curve. and same underlying
              income distribution with quartile sampleing vs dectile sampling
              will give you diff values].
              \_ We sent all the goat milk to Denmark to let them wash down
                 the poor people soylent green.  Anyway, you want the Fazio
                 coefficient, which shows how much state cash you can move
                 to la familia and still keep your job.  -John
        \_ High Gini, no poor:                  Low Gini, some poor:
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