28 Jul Where is the Wealth?
According to this website: “In 2002, 53 million people in the world lived in households in receipt of US$200 purchasing power parity (PPP) per day. Of these high earners, 58% lived in the United States. Western Europe and South America are also home to quite large populations of high earners. Within Western Europe the most very high earners live in the United Kingdom, Italy and France. The highest earners of South America live primarily in Brazil and Argentina. Few very high earners live in Southern Asia, Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Africa.”
By contrast, as is apparent from the map below, “in 7 out of the 12 regions more than half of the population live in households where the people live on below PPP US$10 a day. In Central Africa 95% of households have workers earning this little; in Western Europe and Japan less than 1% of the population does.” Details here.
Readers/viewers concerned with how this economic data might relate to issues of distributive justice can write to Patrick S. O’Donnell (an adjunct instructor in the Philosophy Dept. at Santa Barbara City College in California) for the following compilation: ‘The Ethics, Economics & Politics of Global Distributive Justice: A Transdisciplinary Bibliography.’ An earlier draft of this list (as a pdf. doc.) was made available several months ago at Leiter Reports. Patrick can be reached at patrickseamus ‘at’ hotmail.com. It seems he has a penchant for constructing bibliographies on a motley of subjects, as Leiter has also made available bibliographies on ‘criminal law, punishment and prisons’ and a list titled ‘Animals: Ethics, Rights & Law: A Selected Bibliography.’