@Storm_Marine: Short version is, where there isn't enough wealth, income inequality can only proliferate so much before it trips over minimum subsistence level of the people and basic requirements of the state's budget to keep the country running.
If you lined up the wealthier, developed countries up by income inequality it still wouldn't make sense as a scale of individual freedom, not to mention HDI.
Elaborate please.
Argh forget about that then. Look at it this way, imagine if Qatar decided to take all it's oil money and paid each citizen a equal portion every month. Then they banned capital gains and made a few other adjustments to the economy. Everyone would have a lot of money to live on, and everyone would be pretty much equal. Would Qatar then be the freest country in the world? :/
That's kind of a paradox. Today's Qatar and the reality of its freedom which you imply to be inferior, wouldn't do such a thing to begin with. I can't decide whether countries with the highest degree of freedom would have an equal distribution of wealth or if an equal distribution of wealth would bring about superior freedom. I'm not sure, within the context of my initial claim, which of the two is the cause and which is the effect.
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