Moses, with all respect, I would never believe anything the CIA says! I have seen the evils that organization has perpetrated in Asia, starting perhaps with the Secret War against the tiny nation of Laos which, thanks to the CIA became the most bombed country per capita in history. Add in East Timor, Bangladesh, propping up Marcos, Sukaerno and Suharto and a host of other atrocities and the CIA is a totally discredited organization.
I don't question the data, it is combined from the CIA World Factbook and UN data, I do have issues to relevance to Oliver's comment.Originally Posted by fountainhall
Khor tose (October 24th, 2016)
The data is interesting and doesn't really surprise me. Oliver is commenting on wealth inequality and the link is about income inequality, a big difference as it pertains to Thailand. Wealth is income and all personal and tangible assets but most importantly land. Land is where Thailand’s elite stash their wealth and let's not mention the royal holdings. America, like Thailand is an oligarchy, as Obama said recently the top 1% of Americans possess 40% of the wealth and bottom 80% possess 7%.
CIA's economical data is accurate and is corresponding with World Bank and IMF data...
Khor tose (October 24th, 2016)
As always seems to be the case, different studies provide different results -
According to a new survey, Thailand ranked 6th most unequal country in the world in terms of wealth distribution.Credit Suisse has released a global wealth report that indicated that up to 75 percent of the national wealth is held by those in its top 10 percent. The figure increases from that in 2013 at 73.8 percent.
The rate of unequal distribution of wealth accelerated during 2007-2014, with the share of wealth held by the top 10 percent standing at 69.3 percent in 2007.
http://thainews.prd.go.th/website_en/news/news_detail/WNECO5710200010004
As I mentioned in post 2183, some people are talking wealth inequality and others income inequality, they are not the same. Relevance to Thailand is wealth inequality.
Unless I am reading something incorrectly, surely that Credt Suisse Survey is precisely about wealth inequality?
There are two other issues that have hampered - and continue to hamper - Thailand's economic development and thus its wealth creation and not incidentally a greater distribution of that wealth: endemic corruption on what has become a massive scale and an education system that is desperately incapable of giving students the tools they need to climb out of poverty. It can be no accident that one reason the Asian Tigers developed so quickly is because they all had far more advanced educational systems that are now even more advanced. With the tea money on government contracts regularly in excess of 30% (when that was closer to 15% 20 years ago) and historically the tradition of the providing gifts to those who help individuals, some government has to take very difficult and effective measures to root this out of society. It can be done more or less effectively - as it was in Hong Kong - but it requires a government with guts and utter determination. Will that ever be possible in Thailand?
Two points here:
The CIA world factbook is a good resource, and an obvious attempt by that organisation to improve it's reputation.
International comparisons of wealth and income distribution are not very informative. Personal wealth is only one component of overall wealth, which includes cultural and social resources and shared assets. Bean counters in all walks of life hate things that can't be measured properly, so they often ignore them, drawing daft conclusions as a result.
For example, the medical profession is very good at gathering stats that point to the evils of alcohol, but have no way of measuring it's benefits as a stress reducer. Even though it is known that moderate drinkers live longer than teetotallers, they ignore what they can't measure and keep producing studies that point to alcohol consumption being bad per se.
Economists number crunch endlessly, but have no way of putting a value on London's abundance of parks, Minnesotas abundance of lakes or Thailand's benign climate..
fountainhall (October 24th, 2016), Up2U (October 24th, 2016)
Ok, wealth distribution Gini index for Thailand is 0.710, for USA is 0.801 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...tion_of_wealth
Than higher number - then higher inequality
Something to read http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/americ...th-inequality/
Moses, what is interesting about your sources is that while the USA is first in wealth inequality, Sweden is second. From that, and with the current perception of Sweden as a "welfare state" then one must ask; Can you have a more humane society and still have wealth inequality?
That might be the real lesson of what could work for Thailand....
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