Dan Braganca

Kim Jong Il’s death has a lot of people talking about the terrible suffering in that totalitarian state. Comparing it to the world and to South Korea in particular provides a useful perspective. Income inequality in the US is nothing compared to the misery caused by Kim Jong Il, but I found it fascinating how similarly economic inequality looks comparing North and South Korea with the top 1% and the lowest quintile in the United States.

Can you guess which graph is Per Capita GDP for North vs South Korea and which graph is US real average after-tax income?

Answer after the jump:

And people wonder why inequality concerns people.

(CBO data) (World GDP data)