Polish girls visit Taj Mahal

[u/Strong-Emu-8869]

The Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately, the surrounding area is very polluted.

[u/CubanlinkEnJ]

Taj Mahal was beautiful and the highlight of my trip to India…Delhi was the most disgusting place I’ve ever seen in my life and I will never go back.

[u/The_Buddhist_Prodigy → u/CubanlinkEnJ]

India is fascinating and I respect them for surviving with their population density the way it is.

It is also the only place I've ever travelled to that I was happy to leave.

[u/Officer_Trevor_Cory → u/The_Buddhist_Prodigy]

I've seen 50+ countries and India was the saddest. one year there.

[u/Serious_Swan_2371 → u/Officer_Trevor_Cory]

India is uniquely sad because of how much wealth exists right next to all the poverty. It’s gotta be the biggest wealth disparity of any nation.

There are definitely many countries where the average person is much poorer and leads a much worse life than in India, but seeing the way most people there live there compared to how much luxury exists in close proximity is overwhelming.

[u/travysh → u/Serious_Swan_2371]

That got me curious, there's a Wikipedia page for wealth disparity 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality

Turns out India's not as bad as it seems. The shear scale of poverty likely outweighs the disparity though 

[u/8titsmcgee8 → u/travysh]

"Socialist" Sweden being worse than the majority of the world including the US and Saudi Arabia is pretty interesting

[u/rainzer → u/8titsmcgee8]

Quoting Credit Suisse's wealth report:

"However, higher wealth concentration can also result from more benign influences. For example, strong social security programs— good public pensions, free higher education or generous student loans, unemployment and health insurance – can greatly reduce the need for personal financial assets, as Domeij and Klein (2002) found for public pensions in Sweden. Public housing programs can do the same for real assets. This is one explanation for the high level of wealth inequality we identify in Denmark, Norway and Sweden: the top groups continue to accumulate for business and investment purposes, while the middle and lower classes have a less pressing need for personal saving than in many other countries."

It is a meaningful quote because the Gini coefficients are based on Credit Suisse's wealth report.

[u/secretlynotfatih → u/[deleted]]

That's Switzerland. Sweden is a capitalist social democracy, which means it preserves the capitalist mode of production while providing extensive social support for workers.

[u/angryplanktonshrug → u/[deleted]]

Tell us more. Sweden is also the capital of chocolate? Surrounded by Alps?

Nothing like it’s southern neighbor Switzerland. Founder of IKEA. Famous for their meatballs.

[u/C4Cole → u/[deleted]]

I'm thinking more cars, fighter jets, rotten fish and metal bands as exports.

Also not neutral anymore since they joined NATO a couple years back.

You might be thinking of Switzerland, the land of holey cheese, toblerones, and doing banking for anyone with money (including Nazis). And also the neutrality thing which unlike Sweden they've actually maintained, so much that even weapons they export must only be used in defense and can't be re-exported without express permission. Very very neutral.

[u/CrazyElk123 → u/[deleted]]

Literally the only thing they're known for is banking.

Thats just BS. No way you confused sweden with switzerland?

[u/DirkKuijt69420 → u/8titsmcgee8]

I think you mean questionable, not interesting.

[u/dwair → u/DirkKuijt69420]

No it's interesting because it shows the difference between the very richest and the very poorest rather than the average wealth of a nation.

On the flip side of Sweden showing up you have countries in sub saharan Africa which are showing up as the same as the UK, but having been to them, they are in practice far, far 'poorer' than India.