http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...velopment_Index

Thailand is ranked 74th.

Income disparity in Thailand is one of the world's worst, apparently.

Education never seems to ever get an upgrade too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...velopment_Index

Thailand is ranked 74th.

It is much higher than I expected.

Income disparity in Thailand is one of the world's worst, apparently.

Education never seems to ever get an upgrade too.

Well, in so far as Thailand is somewhere in the lower/middle of about 130 countries, around 70-80th or so, I guess yes, Thailand isn't exactly the leader in income disparity, not quite the world's worst (that honour is reserved for tin pot little African countries with lots of oil, and men with guns to run the pumps).

BUT it is close to a mirror image of income distribution of USA using the GINI/Lorenz curve type approach, and very similar to Singapore as well. No social welfare system; not particularly good education for the poor; plenty of opportunities for the rich to get richer and people who are entrepreneurial enough to want to do so; that sort of thing. Easy to see on the street in Santa Monica; one of the richest countries in the world, yet there are homeless people everywhere, and a ton of uneducated buffoons who voted for the current president (or so the so-called smart people keep telling me , I don't really believe them!). Incidentally, this is also why in each of these countries there are plenty of people driving fancy european cars, then at the same time there are people with almost nothing (well hard to see in Singapore, but I guess it must be there somewhere).

There isn't really that much of a correlation between wealth/development and income distribution; although once you take out USA/Singapore, then most of the other developed countries tend to be on the middle to lower end, although there are plenty of poor countries clustered at each end. European countries tend to be lower since they have higher taxes and more social welfare.

Having said all that, just IMHO the welfare net here in Thailand via the temples and family/community units plus larger non-monetary economy provides a slightly more equal picture for the rural poor. Also, there are programs like 30baht health care and so on. But the gap is still frigging big, and the last PM failed in making a difference simply by throwing money at uneducated people with no business sense in Isaan. The issue is a lot more complex than that.

Edited November 28, 200619 yr by steveromagnino

Wow...

10 spots higher than the P.I.