If nobody has any money at all, would you not say inequality is low? If everyone in Tajikistan has $5 except the president, Emomali Rahmon, is inequality not low?
I suspect you are looking for a pairing of HDI and Gini, which factors in both the development (and hence the standard of living) and the inequality.
Sweden: (Gini: 0.25, HDI: 0.933), France: (Gini: 0.31, HDI: 0.901), Canada: (Gini: 0.33, HDI: 0.926), USA: (Gini: 0.48, HDI: 0.924), South Africa: (Gini: 0.65, HDI: 0.709).
Now, Tajikistan has an HDI of 0.66 ("medium"), and Azerbaijan 0.756 ("high").
Kazakhstan might surprise you, the HDI is 0.817 ("very high"). The standard of living there is actually good, in spite of what you may have seen on Borat - incidentally filmed in Romania. Almaty's been on my list of places to visit for a long time :) [1]
Romania: Gini: 0.36, HDI: 0.828
HDI is close to Kazakhstan, actually
That distribution will yield a very high gini coefficient of very close to 1.
The Gini coefficient is defined as 1/2 the mean absolute difference considering all pairs of households:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
A group of people where everyone has the same income as a Gini coefficient of exactly zero. Adding a single outlier will increase it a little. A group of 1001 with 1000 people earning $1 and one person earning $100 has a Gini coefficient of 0.09.
> That distribution will yield a very high gini coefficient of very close to 1.
It yields (n-1)|5-p|/(2n(5(n-1)+p)) which is about p/(5n+p).
So it depends on whether the president (p) has $10 or $n^2.
Obviously you have to compare apples to apples
If you are a hunter gatherer you just need a good hunt every now and then. There is no pressure to perform work all day if you get enough food.
This is different if you are a farmer. Farming is highly labor intensive. There is so much work to do that you are never done. You will have to repeat the same motions every single day. Swing the same tools the exact same way. People are tied to their land and it is possible to conquer the land violently. You are dependent on a military force which implies that a local ruler must collect taxes to pay the soldiers. That ruler also has power over you which can easily be abused.
Democracy is definitively fairer than having an authoritarian ruler but it can be subject to tyranny of the majority or the minority and still cause failure in leadership.
1. HGs are very skilled, and they build their skills throughout their lives - crucially, starting with childhood and adolescence. I, an adult brought up in a Western civilization, would be totally clueless in a rain forest the same way that those HGs would be totally clueless in our world.
2. HGs live in groups. I would need to find a group of HGs that would accept me, which is highly unlikely because of the language and culture barrier, plus my lack of skills - why would they want to have anything to do with an useless guy in the first place? My CV full of accomplishments does not impress them at all.
Unfortunately, just like transplanting an adult HG into our society most likely ends in them becoming a homeless addict, most likely result for me heading for the jungle is fairly quick death.
Well, I mean, except property rights and the people that will defend them in most of the places in the planet suitable for human habitation.
And the above presumes the existing population would accept you, and it's quite likely they won't.
Deciding to live off the land without special privileges enjoyed by native populations is simply not possible; regular financial transactions between you and society is a requirement, and it's pretty much impossible to raise children without access to modernities and without having the authorities go after you for child abuse.
I love eating wild weeds and berries, but it takes _a lot_ of time to get enough to fill yourself, and it's not a case that people have only eaten stuff like acorns only in times of famine.
This fact by itself made me question a lot of what's in "Sapiens".
Also from what i gather most meat was aquired from trapping, rather than hunting
They tend not to be very wealthy by modern standards. Maybe you could ingratiate yourself to them with them gifts of things that require modern manufacturing infrastructure.
You were born into the tribe, and stayed there your entire life. Also there were no laws on hunting, setting traps, etc.
You've also broken the site guidelines frequently with snark and attacks on other users. Not cool.
Break a leg, if you’re lucky, you’ll a burden for s month.
On the other hand, your teeth may be healthier than that of people who gulp sugary drinks.
Not quite. In totalitarian states, typically everyone's income is fairly equal.
Wealth, however, is often another matter.
In the soviet Union, party apparatchiks often had very nice dachas to live in, fancy cars, exclusive shopping venues with imported goods, vacations abroad, etc. But these things weren't necessarily purchased with disposable income, per-se. At least not officially.
My impression has been that wealth inequality in many places in Europe is much higher than income inequality, as a factor of it being an older society.
The places in Europe I'd want to move to are really no cheaper to buy a house than the places I'd want to live in the US.
I pulled some city-level numbers and it seems like at least in some areas, European SWE are missing out compared to coastal US ones:
London 2018: 0.7 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoracco...
SF 2012: 0.523 https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Income-inequality-on-... (probably this has gone up!)
Paris 2015: ~0.492 https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/data-inequalities-... (they just say "similar to brazil", which is 0.492
Its unfortunately harder to find a bunch of city-level data, I wasn't able to find any German cities on quick googling, so I'm definitely fulfilling stereotypes of "Americans who think of Europe as just a couple famous cities", but those capture at least a couple of major population centers that aren't so appealing if you're a dev compared to the US hotspots: they're still unequal, but suddenly you're not nearly as high on the totem pole.
SE is 0.867 FR is 0.687 CA is 0.726 US is 0.852 ZA is 0.806
- Gini for SE is 0.25
- Gini for FR is 0.31
- Gini for CA is 0.33
- Gini for US is 0.48
- Gini for ZA is 0.65
I've also included South Africa for comparison, one of the least equal societies on earth. A photo of what a 0.65 Gini country looks like is here (https://blog.prif.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SA_Drone_Pi...)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient