Colleagues,

Things are real tough. Those of us have a job can feel guilty. I am the 
director of a NGO that is located in a community of undocumented 
Latinos. Neither you nor I can imagine how frightening that can be. They 
are lovely, lovely people. Kind, strong family ties, and gracious.

But what I write about is inequality. The Gini coefficient is best 
explained as the extent to which two people chosen at random have more 
or less equal wealth. You probably know that.
The US value is 40.8. Its increasing.
http://www.tobinproject.org/conference_economic/papers/BankFailures_ChartwithComments_Moss.pdf

There is NO European county that I could find that has such a high Gini. 
The value for the Netherlands is 30.0 and Norway is 25.8. You can google 
Gini and come up with lots of tables. Its complex, but I would argue 
that impoverishment and unemployment (yes, the sort we have in the U.S.) 
in the context of wealth concentration is a collective violation of 
human rights.

Judith