There's Income --- Then There's Income Inequality: A New Standard for Banana Republics in the Making

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By Harold Hellickson (about the author) Page 1 of 5 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Harold Hellickson - Writer

A lesson from the Corporate Plantation: The Banana Republics distribute their national income less equitably than does the United States (U.S.) but not the District of Columbia (D.C.). “That is not good” say the Owners and Overseers. Washington seeks to do it right and is pushing the rest of the country to follow it's lead. With Corporate influence on Congress and the Administration at the point of owning both, most U.S citizens are wage/salary slaves for the Corporate Plantation. With global warming and the continuation of social and economic trends combined with spineless leadership for the people, the U.S. is on the verge of establishing new standards for a true Banana Republic.

About 30% of the last year's $62.3 million world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was produced by the European Union (EU). The U.S. was 2nd at 23%.

On a per capita basis, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) data shows:

.. the U.S. was ranked 10th in the world with a $47,000 per capita GDP.

.. Lichtenstein was 1st with $118,000.

.. Antigua and Barbuda with $19,000 was the 51st, ranked in the middle of the top 101 countries.

.. Bosnia and Herzegovina with $6,500 was the 101st country.

.. Last year's world per capita GDP was $10,200.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated by adding life expectancy, literacy, and education factors to per capita GDP. The HDI for the U.S. drops to 15th from 10th for per capita GDP. Clearly the U.S. is lacking in leadership of both economic and non-economic factors.

A nation's GDP and its per capita income are indicators of its prosperity. For any individual, household, or family however, how the wealth is distributed is more important. The Gini index measures how much the income distribution differs from a proportional distribution. The index varies from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates perfect equality (everyone has an equal income) and 1 indicates perfect inequality (where one person has all the income and no one else has any).

The CIA provides a Gini index values for 125 countries. For the U.S., income distribution is:

.. more equally distributed in 94 countries,

.. less equally distributed in 30 countries.

The lowest Gini index score in the world is Sweden's at 0.230 followed by Denmark and Slovenia at 0.240. The next 20 countries are all in either Western Europe or the former Communist bloc of Eastern Europe. The European Union as a whole is at 0.307.

.. Russia has the highest number in Europe at 0.410.

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I am a retired MBA, former corporate ideologue, current curmudgeon and third party advocate. My interests include investigating and analyzing polity, economic and social inequities. I seek to understand why egalitarianism has been removed from (more...)

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