Ironic that Egyptian protesters are citing wealth inequality as a prime motivator for their revolution. Just as those pissed off Tunisians did, they're angry about the widening gap between rich and poor in their countries and the subsequent lack of opportunity afforded to ordinary people. But according the CIA World Fact Book, Tunisia and Egypt are only
62nd and
90th most unequal respectively. The US is way ahead at
42nd in the world.
But don't worry, rich folks. Unlike the Tunisians and Egyptians, we're extremely lazy and delusional... unlikely we'll ever haul our dumb, fat asses off the couch to take to the streets. Our money is still safe in your hands, enjoy!
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Hmmm, sorry but I think these statistics are a bit misleading. I've been to many of the countries on this list and I would say there is more equality but it's only in the sense that everybody is equally poor and there aren't that many rich people about per se to create a large disparity. It would make more sense to put it in the context of a further comparison of equality of wealth amongst the actual countries themselves wherein some of those scoring high in disparity of wealth amongst its own citzens are also, en masse, a wealthier country than those with seemingly higher internal equality, resulting in the poor citizens of the unequal country still being a lot wealthier and so a lot better off than the citizens of one of the more equalised countries. That's a more likely reason the US doesn't protest. (Although the article only briefly alludes to it.) Because even when times are hard they're still not comparable to the sort of poverty and hardship your likely to experience in other countries that have no social security infrastructure etc. That, and the illusion they are already democratic and so there's nothing to aim for.
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