In 1912, an Italian statistician named Corrado Gini published a paper called "Variability and Mutability." It's a measure of statistical dispersion, of the inequality of distribution with zero being perfect equality and one being maximally unequal.
The Gini Coefficient has application in many areas such as chemistry, engineering, ecology, health sciences... economics... sociology... but the distribution that interests me the most is the distribution of wealth.
Yesterday (Friday, Dec 2, 2011), on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Dr Zbignew Brzezinski was a guest. He was the National Security Advisor for President Carter. He was talking about the EU and the Euro and will the Euro collapse, etc. But the most interesting thing I think he said (at around 2:15 in the video) was:
"The United States is becoming rapidly one of the most socially unjust societies in the world."
Of course both Joe and daughter Mika called him on that, asking him to explain. He did.
"The social disparities between the rich and the poor in the United States are now the most severe in the world. There is a measure called the Gini Coefficient that measures social inequality and the United States is at the top of the list, if I remember correctly, with China, India, and Brazil. And secondly, did you know that in America, if you are born poor, you chances of dying richer than your parents are lower now than in Europe. Europe now has more social mobility upwards."
Of course, Dr Brzezinski was trying to make the point that the world's view of the US is poor and getting moreso. Who are we to demand our principles on others, for example, when we allow tens of thousands of citizens to die annually because they have no health coverage?
The point of this diary to bring some awareness that over the past 30 years, there really has been an assault on the 99% by the 1%, and it's no secret to the world community. The World "Wealth Gini" is 0.804.The lowest ten countries - those with the best wealth distribution - are, in order: Japan, China, Spain, Korea, Macao, Ireland, Italy, Yemen, Finland, and Australia. The ten highest are, in order: Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, Switzerland, United States, Gabon, Brazil, Central African Republic, Swaziland, and Guatemala. This is a surprising distribution to me. Dr Brzezinski was incorrect in his naming of the US right down there with China, India and Brazil. The number for the US is 0.801, very close to the world average.
So, I guess the 99%ers are right. There is some disparity. It needs to be addressed. There has to be changes in the taxes, Grove Norquist be damned. No one elected him! I think going back to to the structure of the Clinton days, while not perfect, is a whole order better than what we have.