> This is pretty accurate, but I'm making some comments.
...
> > The gap between rich and poor recalls czarist times.
>
> Russia's gap between rich and poor is approximately
> the same as that of the United States. This sucks, but
> "czarist times"? That's silly.
Without getting into how they get and crunch the data this
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_index>
suggests that it's less than in the States, on the high end of Europe, on par with Canada.
The graph of historical data is pretty interesting: Sweden has always been mid-range for Europe, UK used to be on the low end, and France was very high until it plummeted in the 70's. Unsurprisingly the US bottomed out around 1970 and has been creeping up ever since.
-- Andy