CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

224 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
65 or 0.65, and this picture corresponds approximately to today’s Gini coefficient
for the whole world.
Gini coefficients are useful but imperfect. Not every society has a nice,
smooth income distribution curve. Some have lumpy curves, corresponding
to concentrations of income at various levels. Thus, two societies with the
same Gini coefficient can show quite dissimilar curves, depending on where
their incomes may be clustered. In fact, to be even clearer, there are an infinite
number of curves that can produce the same Gini.
While Gini coefficients are commonly referred to in the popular
press, there are a great many other inequality measures that are used by
specialists. By way of mention only, these include the Dalton measure,
the Theil index, the Atkinson index, variance of logarithmic income,
squared coefficient of variation, and mean logarithmic deviation, as well
as some with whimsical names such as the Parade of Dwarfs and the
Robin Hood index. Suffice it to say that an enormous amount of scholarly
attention is focused on measurement issues and will likely pay off in
future years with greater public attention devoted to global inequality
and poverty concerns.
IT’S AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
As poverty and inequality are studied more deeply, the fog of statistics confirms
the enormous uncertainties surrounding fundamental questions still
facing our shared planet. Some of these shape the way we think about philosophical,
geopolitical, and security issues. I address six of these big questions
in this section.
First, are monetary measures the right bases for evaluating poverty and
inequality? A number of researchers are pushing definitions of poverty well
beyond per capita GDP and its various PPP conversions. The direct calorie
intake measure sets a basic nutritional requirement at 2,112 calories per person
per day and considers poverty to be any shortfall below this level. The
food energy intake method prices the 2,112 calorie intake and sets that expenditure
as the poverty line. A variation on these themes defines extreme
poverty as households that spend 80 percent or more of their total income
on food and yet still receive 80 percent or less of their daily calorie require-