[lbo-talk] Interesting Chilean economist, on DN today

lbo83235 lbo83235 at gmail.com
Thu Mar 3 06:54:09 PST 2011


On Sep 23, 2010, at 3:54 PM, Wojtek S wrote:


> As far as the United States is concerned, I do not think it is
> exceptional in any way, as Max-Neef seems to believe. In fact it is
> very typical, a conglomeration of many typical trends from around the
> world. It does not have exceptionally living standards (many other
> countries are better off) nor does it have particularly glaring social
> inequalities and related vices (there is plenty to much worse examples
> around the world.) although its hegemonic position in the world has
> declined somewhat, it is not on a verge of a collapse, not even close.
> The most likely scenario is that it will be muddling and limping
> through in its present form and its present problems for a long run
> (i.e. until we are all dead.) No spectacular changes, no catastrophic
> downfalls, but no meteoric rises either - just mediocre slouching
> along.

This is from a thread from several months ago but came up in a search today while looking for information on Max-Neef (who happens to be a friend of a friend).

Reading this, it occurred to me that while US inequality as such isn't necessarily exceptional, surely the relationship between wealth (on some metric of that) and inequality in the US is. I quickly found two links that seem to confirm this:

<http://www.mindcontagion.org/html/gini_vs_gdp.html>

<http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/01/04/gdp-per-capital-vs-gini-index/>

Can anyone point me to any other especially interesting work being done on Gini vs. other economic metrics?



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