Reply #18: the wealth/income gaps are THE issue of this century [View All]

[iverglas]

The disparity has historically been wider in the US than in any comparable country -- US first, UK a distant second, others clustered below that, Canada around the middle. The gaps have been widening in every single country, Canada no exception.

The numbers these days are simply mindblowing.


The GINI index is a measure of income disparity: the higher the index, the greater the disparity. When you look at those annual lists of best places to live, the UN development index, and so on, it's always: the lower the index, the better a place to live.


An oldie but goodie, to relate this to the forum topic:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1149085&mesg_id=1151097

I used to have a link to the full article I quoted there, but it's dead. This has the abstract and some other references:

http://www.mendeley.com/research/income-inequality-and-homicide-rates-in-canada-and-the-united-states/

Previous research showing that income inequality (assessed by the Gini index) is a predictor, and hence a possible determinant, of homicide rates, whether at the cross-national, state or city level, has been inconclusive because of a negative relationship between economic inequity and average income.

Comparison across the Canadian provinces provides a test case in which average income and the Gini are instead positively correlated, and we find that the positive relationship between the Gini and the homicide rate is undiminished. Temporal change in the Gini is also shown to be a significant predictor of temporal change in provincial homicide rates.

When Canadian provinces and U.S. states are considered together, local levels of income inequality appear to be sufficient to account for the two countries' radically different national homicide rates.

On "communism" -- fortunately, in Canada, the stupidity was never as strong in that regard. We've had social democratic parties for decades, and everybody knows that's how we got universal health care and so on (Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather was the provincial premier / national leader of the NDP who gave birth to it). The old fool my mum was talking to is really just idiosyncratically stupid. ;)