Daily chart: which countries are the most fair? Sweden comes out top of this new index which ranks 31 OECD countries by their levels of “social justice”. Turkey performed particularly poorly; America little better.
France is doing great!
I am reading the original report, which is in German (German bloggers/ Tumblrs will probably have more meaningful interpretations due to the fact that my German is somehow rudimentary) and I see The Economist provided a rather poor interpretation of the chart, to the point that they have completely altered it without clarifying this fact.
This is the overall ranking (screen capture from the PDF file is mine):
What The Economist did, in an effort (I assume) to shorten up the table, is trim the top ten, trim a few more countries below the top ten and then insert the US within the context that was left over. This provides a rather illusory image, because, without this clarification, one might be tempted to believe that, the US ranks in the 15th position, whereas, in reality, it is in the slot number 25.
I only checked the original report because, living in The Netherlands, even with all its current flaws, I was surprised we were nowhere to be seen. Turns out we are in position number 6, but The Economist, in their efforts towards brevity, erased us completely.
So yeah, the original post by The Economist provides poor context and no further explanation. I would even be tempted to believe that, through omission, they were trying to make the US look better than it really ranked.
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