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A comment on Global economic inequality: what matters most is where you are. Parent comment

Re:Global economic inequality: what matters most is where yo... by bee_rider on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:30PM (#29515107)
They are describing what they'd do to write a paper to "whitewash the staggering amount of wealth and power is held by American oligarchs," so, a list of things that should appear plausible to the reader, but which are fundamentally misleading. Ignoring PPP is a great way to get numerical differences without QOL differences, as you point out.

I haven't gotten to the article yet, but I'm pretty sure this is intended as a criticism or the article.

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Re:Global economic inequality: what matters most is where yo... by s1artibartfast on Friday December 10, 2021 @04:07PM (#29515460)
But ignoring PPP does the opposite of whitewash the accumulated wealth. Ignoring PPP makes the disparity greater, not less
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Re:Global economic inequality: what matters most is where yo... by bee_rider on Friday December 10, 2021 @04:46PM (#29515831)
Increasing the disparity between countries reinforces the argument "conditions in your country are so great, stop talking about your internal income inequality" which is, I think, what the original comment was implying to be the point here.

Looking at the article, it uses the term "international dollars" instead of "PPP adjusted dollars," so I think the original comment just missed that the dollars are actually adjusted.

It makes sense if you read the original comment as a criticism of the article ("whitewash the staggering amount of wealth and power is held by American oligarchs" is, I think, pretty clearly a bad thing to do) which just missed that the dollars in the article were adjusted.

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Re:Global economic inequality: what matters most is where yo... by s1artibartfast on Friday December 10, 2021 @05:14PM (#29516089)
yeah, it sounds like we interpreted "whitewash the staggering amount of wealth and power is held by American oligarchs" in different ways.

I took it as minimizing the disparity between rich and poor countries.

I don't know how to reconcile your interpretation with the idea that someone should feel guilty for having a higher dollar income but the same PPP income as someone else.

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