Blow's "Revolutionary Measures"

The New York Times' Charles Blow has created an chart of various economic realities that may underlie the popular uprisings against autocratic and unrepresentative governments in North Africa and across the Middle East that we are now seeing. He calls it "Revolutionary Measures." Go take a look.

I was struck by one of his variables: the rate of economic inequality in these countries, otherwise known as the gap between the few very rich and the many very poor. I grabbed a very small amount of his data and reproduce it here:



The only country of the 24 on Blow's chart where economic inequality approaches the measure in the United States is Iran.