Importance of the Gini Coefficient - Wikipedia's Socialist Bias?

Yay inequality, more poor girls for my harem!

14 (25.5%)

Inequality is good, as long as it's meritocratic.

11 (20%)

Wealth inequality is a meaningless statistic.

18 (32.7%)

Inequality is bad - a sign of evil Capitalism.

2 (3.6%)

Inequality is bad - a sign of evil Socialism.

6 (10.9%)

Inequality is bad - a sign of education disparity.

4 (7.3%)

Total Members Voted: 14

[Alex Libman]

Since left-wingers on average have shorter working hours and smaller families than the right-wingers, it isn't very surprising that Wikipedia leans firmly to the left.  (For example, every tiny open source project has an article, but creating an article for a commercial software utility often sparks a complicated deletion debate - mere popularity isn't enough, you need to cite good unbiased sources, and things like Download.com reviews are not good enough.)  I never really had a huge problem with that situation, but one issue has really crossed the line.

The articles on various world nations are starting to show a color-coded Gini coefficient qualification, indicating wealth distribution inequality.  Subjectively speaking, some relatively "good" nations are near the top, and some relatively "bad" nations are near the bottom, but the correlation is pretty weak and inconclusive.  Hong Kong has a red inequality indicator (high), while the dictatorship of Belarus is green (low).  The only other color-coded indicator that info-box contains is HDI (Cuba = green).  The GDP numbers are not color-coded, thus deemphasized, and more meaningful indicators like economic, press, and civil liberties are buried deep.

Wealth inequality is of course unavoidable in a free and meritocratic society, since in the modern world of ideas one Einstein can make a greater contribution than a billion unskilled functionally-illiterate laborers whose jobs are already gradually being replaced by robots.  And yet one can't help but admire countries like Japan and the Scandinavian countries, which in spite of all their socialism manage to remain very economically competitive, wealthy, and less prone to police state tactics than the United States.  Also note that we're not talking about income (i.e. GDP), but about wealth.  Check out this blog entry and the PDF reports it links to - of the top 1% wealthiest people, 27% live in Japan, which just recently had one of the lowest measures of inequality amongst major first world nations, and the average "wealth per capita" (see page 50) in Japan and is higher than in the United States.  So the issue is far from simple.

Socialists keep getting better at bringing up those issues in debate, and we should be ready to counter-argument.

[ladyattis]

It's meaningless since it's an attempt to claim that wealth is not created.

-- Brede

[wtfk]

The statist-socialist praise (e.g. the FDR article) and libertarian-bashing (e.g. the tax protester article) on Wikipedia really pisses me off.  There are frequently edit wars between libertarians and socialists, and it hurts Wikipedia's credibility.

As for the issue, this would seem to be...to put it bluntly...a measure of how socialist-democratic a country is.  I can't see any way around it.  For them, that would be good, and for us, it would be bad.  There is, of course, an asterisk--a lack of wealth distribution could also be associated with systematic abuse, by government alone or by fascism/corporatism, of the lower and middle classes (we could be seeing some much of that, of course, but in our case I think those forces compete against each other.)

[lordmetroid]

How the hell did Japan get to become green?
In Japan the distinction between sexes are an important part of their culture. Their are certain jobs only males can perform and likewise there are certain jobs only females can perform. There are certainly females in the work-force but there are quite many females that are house-wifes. Nothing bad about that, when asked the house-wifes actually prefers to not work.

Granted I don't know about salary equality but considering that females has lower social status than men I get a little bit suspicious about that green.

[Evil Muppet]

The Gini Coefficient isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I can see the value in having that.  So long as the methodology in developing it is sound anyways. 

The negative aspects come in with the fact that people place a moral significance on an inequal distribution of wealth or income and the people who developed the Gini are using it to prop up a certain kind of argument.  The Gini Coefficient isn't the problem, the problem is the base assumption which claims that income and wealth inequities is a social justice problem. 

[wtfk]

The Gini Coefficient isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I can see the value in having that.  So long as the methodology in developing it is sound anyways. 

The negative aspects come in with the fact that people place a moral significance on an inequal distribution of wealth or income and the people who developed the Gini are using it to prop up a certain kind of argument.  The Gini Coefficient isn't the problem, the problem is the base assumption which claims that income and wealth inequities is a social justice problem. 

Okay, so you're saying it's irrelevant to us?  I'd agree.  It is the attempt of the left to push it as significant that's disconcerting.   After all, so much injustice is done because they choose equality over freedom.  That doesn't work because the entire context of the importance of equality is that people should be treated equally under government--if government is to be tolerated.  Now they go use it as some kind of global biofeedback mechanism to fine-tune socialism....

[Porcupine_in_MA]

I have a request..could more folk vote for "Yay inequality, more poor girls for my harem!"?  Thanks.

[Porcupine_in_MA]

I have a request..could more folk vote for "Yay inequality, more poor girls for my harem!"?  Thanks.

Done; and before I even read this post. 

  Karma for you!

[cerpntaxt]

WikiPedia does not have a socialist bias. It is simply showing that mainstream economics has a socialist bend to it.

[Taors]

I have a request..could more folk vote for "Yay inequality, more poor girls for my harem!"?  Thanks.

Done; and before I even read this post. 

Me too.

[YixilTesiphon]

I have a request..could more folk vote for "Yay inequality, more poor girls for my harem!"?  Thanks.

My pleasure.

[freeAgent]

I already voted for it, along with #2 and #5.  I know, I know, they might be construed as contradictory but I swear they aren't.

[Andy]

We could contest the leftists assumption that wealth inequality can be reduced/avoided under socialism. For example Australia (Light Green) is the third most economically free country, while Zimbabwe and Venezuela are coloured red.

Of course the better argument is that inequality does not matter in and of itself even if it is sometimes an indicator of other problems.

And of course inequality is fostered by corporatism.