Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What Indians and Chinese make of their tycoons
What Indians and Chinese make of their tycoons
May 14, 2026 10:34 AM

An interesting report in The Economist on the rise of flashy and free spending entrepreneur “gazillionaires” in India and China and how they are perceived:

In much of India, life is getting perceptibly better each year. Wealth per person has vaulted by 150% in the past decade, from $2,000 to $5,000. Many Indians think the nation’s entrepreneurs deserve some of the credit. In Dharavi, a slum outside Mumbai, an illiterate mother called Aruna sits in her tiny one-room flat, which is home to ten people. Asked how she feels about the rich, she says: “They have worked hard. And we must work hard, too.” Her eldest daughter has a job entering data at a bank. The next one is studying diligently. The family may be near the bottom of the ladder, but it sees a way up.

But this in China:

The perception mercial success often depends on political ties makes inequality in China more galling. In the mid-1980s Chinese es were more evenly distributed than India’s—hardly surprising, since China was munist and India is afflicted by a caste system. But now China is less equal than India, with a Gini coefficient of 0.4 to India’s 0.37. China has 800,000 dollar millionaires, but also 400m people who live on less than $2 a day.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Faith-based weather broadcasting
Via Drudge, the Weather Channel “Climate Expert” is taking serious flack (check ments) for her call to pull the credentials of any media meteorologist who doesn’t endorse the theory of human-caused global warming. The cover provided by her boss doesn’t garner any more favorable feedback. I think people want more science from scientists and less dogma. I know I do. UPDATE: On the other hand, this seems a little over the top. If forecasters can’t reliably tell us what will...
Rangel at the helm
mittee, arguably, has more power or attracts more lobbyists than the Committee on Ways and Means,” writes the NYT’s Robin Toner. “Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, joined mittee in 1975, and now, at the age of 76, has finally arrived at the very top.” “[Jesus] said the rich are going straight to hell.” Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist, said: “When the Ways and Means Committee has worked well, they’ve identified social needs and advocated for the funds...
Jewish theology and economic theory
Pick up the new monograph, Judaism, Markets, and Capitalism: Separating Myth from Reality, from the all-new Acton Bookshoppe today! How does one account for the widespread distaste among Jews for a free market political agenda? Why is it that Jews, who earn per capita almost twice as much as non-Jews in America, “fervently support relatively collectivist social policies”? Corinne and Robert Sauer, co-founders of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, contend that “it is not at all true that Judaism...
The long, slow march of freedom
With respect to the extension of political, economic, and religious freedom, East Asia contains some of the more challenging spots on the globe. mented in the past on Korea and China. It seems safe now to place in the column “making progress” a nation that had been one of the most totalitarian, Vietnam. Concerning the sphere of religious freedom, Zenit offers this interview (Daily Dispatch 01-25) with French Archbishop Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin of Tours. Aubertin characterizes the situation of the Catholic...
Even Big Bird knows better
You may have seen this story a few weeks back toward the end of last year: “Some faith groups say bottled water immoral,” by Rebecca U. Cho of the Religion News Service. The core of the story revolves around this assertion made by the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program and a number of other mainline projects: Drinking bottled water is a sin. Cassandra Carmichael, director of eco-justice programs for the National Council of Churches, bases this claim on the...
Child labor is too expensive
Child labor is too expensive, at least for the Grand Rapids Press. As part of “cost-cutting measures,” The Press will no longer be delivered by paperboys and papergirls under the age of 18. According to , “In a change to the way they deliver their papers to their carriers, The Press announced they will drop off their papers to depots around the city instead of at neighborhood corners. The carrier will have to go to that depot to get their...
The global warming trough
Kim Strasell in OpinionJournal today: CEOs are quick learners, and even those who would get smacked by a carbon cap are now devising ways to make warming work to their political advantage. The “most creative” prize goes to steel giant Nucor. Steven Rowlan, pany’s environmental director, doesn’t want carbon caps in the U.S.–oh, no. The smarter answer, he explains, would be for the U.S. to impose trade restrictions on foreign firms that aren’t environmentally clean. Global warming as foil for...
Porn drives tech? Maybe not…
They say that technology drives culture (HT: Zondervan>To The Point). But what drives technology? Many believe that pornography is the driving force behind adoption of particular technologies. Thus, says Slate television critic Troy Patterson, “Watching YouTube is far closer to consuming Internet pornography than staring at the television. … But then, all media culture has an increasingly pornographic feel, doesn’t it?” Let’s look at some actual cases where this claim has been made (HT: Slashdot). In a recent TG Daily...
Religion, recidivism, and reform
The Detroit News ran mentary from the end of last year on the role of religion and prisoner reform today, “Don’t prevent religion from helping to reform prisoners.” The version that ran today omits the references to Jeremy Bentham, which you can get from the original and this related blog post. In related news, Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley reports today that the “Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has set February 13, 2007, for oral arguments in the appeal of...
Negotiating entitlements
Last night the President spoke of “the challenge of entitlements” and said that “Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid mitments of conscience — and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound.” “With enough good sense and good will, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid — and save Social Security,” he averred. The ability of the federal government to negotiate drug prices has been an aspect of the recent debate over Medicare that was brought to...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved