Video and computer games are no longer a nascent entertainment technology just for kids. It’s a $7 billion industry aimed at an average player who is 33 years old. In fact 69% of players are older than 18. So it should come as no surprise that an industry born to entertain is now reaching maturity. Violent video games have existed since the beginning. But innovation in gaming is allowing a wider range of viewpoints to use video games to reflect their own reality, recruit people to their causes, and even to mix foreign policy with virtual reality.

Early video games such as fighter jet flight simulators were developed in the private sector. Some simulators such as F-16 Fighting Falcon were so realistic, that the Air Force classified aspects of the game and started using them for training their own pilots.

The U.S. Department of Defense has used several video games over the years to train and recruit new soldiers. The line between government and commercial games is increasingly blurred. The Army game, America’s Army was first developed with U.S. government dollars. Now it’s available for Xbox. More recently, the government has flipped the investment equation, using venture capital money to fund video games, hoping that commercial sales will subsidize the classified versions of their strategy and war games.

But such public-private partnerships are a thin line to walk. Pandemic Studios, the creator of Mercenaries 2, has previously developed training aids for the US Army. Their most recent commercial release of the video game Mercenaries 2 features a presumably fictitious storyline about a group of ragtag mercenaries on their way to Venezuela to oust Hugo Chavez. Apparently this hit a little too close to home and there are accusations from the Venezuelan government that the game is propaganda from the U.S. Intelligence Community. Dreamy rockstar/activist, Bono, an investor in a parent company was even swept up in the controversy.

Resistance and terrorist organizations have also developed video games that tell their side of the story. Special Force is Hezbollah’s response to American video games that portray all Arabs as terrorists. In another video game, Under Siege, players violently fight the Israeli army in game apparently based on a true story of Palestinian repression and resistance.

And finally, domestic extremists have utilized video game technology to extol their own twisted values. The game Border Patrol has a deceptively innocent, cartoon-like interface. The object of the game is anything but innocent: gun down families crossing border between Mexico and the U.S. An even more technologically complex and disturbingly sinister game is blatantly named Ethnic Cleansing. The neo-Nazi goal is to wipe out all non-whites.

For the baby boom generation it is easy to ignore video games as child’s play. They are not. As you can see from the screenshots below, video games are effective tools of resistance, terror, war and death. But as much as gaming reflects the dark side of humanity, they are also showing signs of redemption, peace, and diplomacy. Stay tuned.
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Commercial War Games

Real War: Rogue States

About: A commercial release where a player can choose between two player profiles: the United States and the Independence Liberation Army, an amalgam of terrorist groups with access to heavy weaponry. Based on the game Real War, an official Joint Chiefs training game, all jets, ships, and ground vehicles are taken directly from today’s military - with a few special items right off the Pentagon’s drawing boards.

Developer: Rival Interactive

Price: $9.95

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Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

About: Players drop into Venezuela to help settle an oil dispute, take on “a power hungry tyrant,” and blow up lots and lots of stuff. Though Mercenaries 2 is based on a fictional scenario, the plot is “realistic enough to believe that it could actually happen,” a Pandemic rep told the AP.

Supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of American policy, are not amused. “[Mercenaries 2] sends a message to Americans: You have a danger next door, here in Latin America, and action must be taken,” said lawmaker Gabriela Ramirez. “It’s a justification for an imperialist aggression.” Ramirez also said that Mercenaries 2 could be banned from the country by laws intended to protect children from violent games….

“I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later,” said Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia. - Source: gamespot.com
Developer: Pandemic Studios

Price: TBA

Web Site: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/proj_mercs2.php

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Government War Games

F2C2 (Future Force Company Commander)

About: The Army’s war game and recruiting tool for Future Combat Systems (FCS).

From army.mil: “F2C2 is a real-time tactical strategy game that allows you to learn about the Army’s FCS program by giving you command of a Mounted Company Team in the year 2015. Through gameplay, F2C2 shows how FCS is designed to give the 21st Century Soldier unprecedented situational awareness and the ability to see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.”

Developer: SAIC

Price: Free

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First to Fight

About: First to Fight is a tactical first-person shooter in which you lead a four-man fire team in close-quarters urban combat in the streets and buildings of Beirut. It was created with the help of more than 40 active-duty U.S. Marines fresh from firefights in the Middle East and will be used by the United States Marine Corps for training.

Developer: Destineer & U.S. Marines. In-Q-Tel has invested in Destineer to develop additional training and simulation games for the intelligence community.

Funding: Private

Price: $29.99

Web site: http://www.firsttofight.com/html/

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America’s Army

About: America’s Army is a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter owned by the U.S. government and released as a global public relations initiative to present an image of the current U.S. Army and help with U.S. Army recruitment. A different version of the game for Xbox and PlayStation 2, America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier, is being developed by Ubisoft in collaboration with the U.S. Army. The Xbox version was released in November, 2005.

Developer: MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School was contracted by the U.S. Army to create the game
Funding: U.S. Department of Defense

Commercial Developer: Ubisoft

Funding: U.S. Government - three years and $7.5 million

Reach: 5 million registered users as of May, 2006

Price: Army version is free; XBox version America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier is $19.99

Web site: http://www.americasarmy.com/

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Resistance War Games

Hezbollah’s Special Force

About: Special Force is a first-person shooter military video game, published by the militant Islamic organisation Hezbollah. Special Force allows the player to take the part of an armed member of the Islamic Resistance to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon and to attack Israeli positions and Israeli politicians.

It carries a deliberate and specific political message, that is pro-Islamic and anti-Israel. On the cover of the game’s box, a message to users says “the designers of Special Force are very proud to provide you with this special product, which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.” It adds: “Be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy in the game of force and victory.” - Source: Wikipedia

Reach: game sold out of first run of 100,000 copies

Web site: Official website in English (Inactive as at 20 July 2006)

Video of game being played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvmj7wj1UOw

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Under Siege

About: Under Siege is a sequel to the video game Under Ash. It is a first-person shooter, with the option of playing the game as a third-person shooter. The game focuses on the lives of a Palestinian family between 1999 and 2002 during the second Intifada. The player shoots at Israeli Defense Force soldiers throughout most of the game. However, shooting at civilians or otherwise hurting them ends the game. The game has been described as a docugame, since all the game levels are based on on the lives of 5 Palestinian family members during the second Intifada 1999-2002. - Source: Wikipedia

Developer: Afkar Media in Damascus, Syria

Cost: About $100,000

Price: $10

Web Site: http://www.underash.net/en_download.htm

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Hate Video Games

Border Patrol

About: Credited to the bigoted neo-Nazi Tom Metzger, puts you in the role of a hunter/murderer who patrols the southern border with Mexico. Your objective: “Keep them out…at any cost!” “Them,” by the game’s definition, are the “wetbacks” trying to cross the border from Mexico.

Developer: Tom Metzger

Funding: Private

Cost: Free

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Ethnic Cleansing

About: Created by the fringe neo-Nazi organization National Alliance, this elaborate and incredibly offensive video game seeks to extend the reach one of the most extreme viewpoints in American culture.

A description from the Anti-Defamation League: “The player roams the streets and subways murdering ‘predatory sub-humans’ and their Jewish ‘masters’ thereby ‘saving’ the white world…. The game has a high level of background detail and various National Alliance signs and posters appear throughout while racist rock blares on the soundtrack.”

From the resistance.com: “The most politically incorrect video game ever made. Run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics in an attempt to gain entrance to the subway system, where the jews have hidden to avoid the carnage. Then, if YOU’RE lucky…. you can blow away jews as they scream “Oy Vey!”, on your way to their command center.”

Developer: National Alliance

Funding: Private

Cost: $14.88

As U.S. casualties continue to mount in Iraq, there are increasing calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Democrats remain divided on withdrawal as a viable strategy for the midterm election. Our involvement in Iraq is a political issue in Washington to be sure, but not for the right reasons.

Even if you support troops and want to prevent the further loss of American lives, it’s imperative to look beyond our own losses. Iraqi civilians are dying at the rate of 100 per day according to the United Nations. In June alone, more than 50 Iraqi civilians died for every one of our soldiers. And their deaths are increasingly cruel.

These questions might help frame the debate over a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq:

1. Are our troops exacerbating the problem or are they preventing further violence in Iraq? An Army commander in the documentary “Operation: Dreamland” commented that (paraphrased), “At this point, we are here to protect one thing: ourselves.”

2. Will the withdrawal of American troops increase the bloodletting in Iraq and lead to a full-scale civil war? If so, our current investment of troops and money might look like child’s play compared to our later involvement in a civil, or even a regional war.

3. If we left Iraq immediately and it turned into a flourishing democracy and ally, would our military credibility still be permanently weakened? Withdrawal also writes a recipe for how to engage our military in asymmetric tactics such as the use of IEDs. Iraqi insurgents have clearly learned that we didn’t stay the course in Somalia in 1994 after our troops were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Unfortunately, our involvement in Iraq is more likely to be determined by domestic politics rather than by considering the hard questions.

If we divide the U.S. into Bush states and Kerry states based on the 2004 election, we can gain some insight into how troop casualties might affect the elections. Of the 11 states that were competitive in the 2004 presidential election (less than 5% difference between winner and loser), all but two states have higher troop losses per capita than the average of the states that Kerry carried.

With support for the war in Iraq slipping and the plummet of Bush’s approval rating, those red swing states with higher-than-average fatalities are unlikely to have the stomach for U.S. troop losses that they did two years ago.

Consider this: on a per capita basis, 585 times more Iraqi civilians than U.S. troops were killed in the month of June. Redeployment is more complicated than short-term domestic politics. Let’s hope the politicians realize that by considering how our policy will affect troop losses well beyond the midterm elections.

Notes: U.S. troop losses as of 7.26.06

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Coalition Casualty Count; USA Today; U.S. Census

Bush announced that he would be sending more troops to Baghdad at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush commented that “Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops.”

This comes on the heels of the United Nations reporting that Iraq averaged more than 100 civilian deaths per day in June. The UN report was surprisingly precise in its numbers which were based on data provided by the Iraq Ministry of Health and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.

The UN report included grim, yet matter-of fact, examples of the violence: “On 10 June, 7 bodies were found in the river ‘Malih,’ in Wasit Governorate. The victims wore civilian clothes; some were handcuffed, tortured and shot in the head. Dead bodies are regularly found in the same river.”

At Iraq Body Count (IBC), academics and peace activists have been keeping a separate record of civilian deaths based on news reports from at least two media sources. This tally includes detail that was noticeably absent from the UN report: Iraqi violence seems to be increasingly cruel. According to statastic.com analysis of IBC data, 1.4% of deaths of deaths in April, 2006 involved beheading or decapitation. This rose to 3.5% in May, and 4.4% in June.

These grim excerpts help reveal the scope of the brutality in June alone:

• June 29: Two decapitated bodies found in Kirkuk
• June 10: Severed heads of two brothers kidnapped in Baquba found
• June 10: Seven bodies found beheaded, tortured in Al-Maleh river
• June 6: Nine severed heads found in Hadid
• June 3: Eight severed heads of a Sheik and cousins who were construction workers in Hadid, (found) near Baquba
• June 1: Four men, some of whom detained by police in north Baghdad, found beheaded in Hibhib, near Baquba

It’s impossible for us to imagine death by decapitation. Such a murder would make the U.S. national news, talk shows and media swirl for days, if not weeks. But in Iraq this summer, an average of one civilian is beheaded every day .

Notes: The IBC Web site states that it underestimates the true number of casualties, although they do attempt to incorporate aggregated data from morgues that was not accounted for in media reports. IBC reports minimum and maximum civilian deaths, both are determined by discrepancies in media reports about the same event. The chart above uses the minimum monthly toll.

Because IBC data relies on media reports, any difference in reporting will naturally affect the nature of the data. For example, increased violence may inhibit journalists from reporting some civilian deaths. If violence reduces mobility of journalists, they minght inadvertently over-report especially brutal civilian deaths, thereby increasing the percentage of reported deaths that involve torture or decapitation.

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Body Count Database; United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)

Access to potable water remains one of the most enduring problems around the world. Today more than 1 billion people do not have access to improved drinking water sources. This leads to 1.6 million deaths from diarrhea each year, the vast majority occurring in children younger than 5.

Multilateral development agencies have been working for decades to improve this situation. Early water projects were well-intentioned engineering gifts. The SCANWATER project, for example, simply installed gas-powered water towers on the highest hills around Cameroon. Because these projects didn’t develop local capacity to train technicians or to collect money for expensive maintenance, most of these water towers rapidly fell into disrepair.

So the key to sustainability is access, simplicity, good design and minimal maintenance. Two promising products are the Playpump and LifeStraw. As you can probably guess from the compound names, these products combine simple existing concepts with water sanitation development goals.

PlayPump is a water pump powered by children who play on a merry-go-round. The pumps are often located near
primary schools to take advantage of abundant free “labor.” Many primary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa have more than 100 students per class, so classes are taught in shifts. During this downtime, children can play on the merry go round ensuring a regular supply of water.

The PlayPump also takes advantage of the demographics that characterize developing nations, where half the population is under the age of fifteen.

In villages where girls are most often assigned the chore of fetching water, the PlayPump has the potential to reduce the distances walked for clean water, increasing the likelihood that girls can go to school.

Playpumps cost about $5000 each and can produce up to 1400 liters (370 gallons) per hour, enough water for 2,500 people. The water towers also can accomodate up to four billboard advertisements, two of which are normally reserved for public health messages, and two for revenue generation that provides for maintenance expenses. Currently a South African company is installing them with some help from the World Bank.

The second product is LifeStraw, which is produced by the Danish company Vestergaard-Frandsen. The LifeStraw is basically a lightweight handheld filtration device that can be worn around the neck. Any time someone need a sip of water, they can use this device to automatically filter out contaminants. The LifeStraw doesn’t require any spare parts, and it lasts for about one year or 700 liters. They retail in the developing world for $6, or about 1.6 cents per day. The company that produces LifeStraw has ambitious sales goals. The creator, Torben Vestergaard-Frandsen, said that, “We will be disappointed, if we do not sell at least 10 million LifeStraw a year.”

At less than a cent per liter of water filtered, LifeStraw is competitive with other water filtration systems in the developing world. That cost should come down as they ramp up production and realize economies of scale.

And lest you get the idea of ordering a LifeStraw for your homeland security kit or for camping, it’s still being reviewed by the EPA, so it’s not yet available in the U.S. One other caveat: it does not protect against Giardia, a nasty little parasite that Statastico really recommends avoiding.

What other ideas are waiting to be combined into a life-saving innovation? How about an electrical generator powered by soccer players? A playground slide that doubles as solar power? With more than 1 billion people around the world without access to clean water, invention is indeed the mother of necessity.

Sources: Statastic research, WHO, United Nations

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an editorial that put the estimated death toll from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo at 3.9 million, the equivalent of the entire San Francisco Bay Area population.

The war, which has involved as many as six nations, started in 1998 and continues to this day. The International Rescue Committee and The Lancet found that 98% of the deaths were due to treatable disease and malnutrition, largely the result of displacement during conflicts in the east. The remaining 160,000 deaths were a direct result of fighting.

The quality of the data in the editorial and the reports on which it is based are very impressive; the results are not. By comparing our response to the conflict in Congo with other recent wars and natural disasters, we find a discouraging record:

• -On a per capita basis, 30 times more United Nations Peacekeepers were deployed to Kosovo, where 12,000 people died, than to Congo where 3.9 million people have died this far.
• -The dollars of international aid distributed to Aceh, Indonesia in the wake of the tsunami was almost 100 times higher than the aid that has flowed to Congo.
• -In 2005 the media reported on Darfur more than 5 times more often than on the conflict in Congo.

The lessons from the data are clear:

1. 1. The media is more likely to report on wars that have been labeled genocide.
2. 2. The media is less likely to report on festering wars with no apparent good guys and bad guys.
3. 3. Media reports drive world attention. World attention drives donation rates, the reaction of our governments, and the deployment of U.N. Peacekeepers
4. 4. Citizen donations are fickle.  Governments are ultimately responsible for addressing conflicts such as that in Congo.

To learn more about the war in Congo, visit the IRC web site. There is also a link to take action by writing your Senator (assuming you’re not a Washington, DC resident).

Sources: Statastic research, International Rescue Committee, Wikipedia, Washington Post.

Every so often, Jeffrey Sachs tries to humiliate the U.S. into increasing its foreign aid. It’s true: While we give away about $19 billion annually in foreign aid, it’s not much relative to our Gross National Income. The Dutch give away about 5 times more, and we’re usually toward the bottom of the rankings for industrialized nations.

But even our Official Development Assistance - grants that promote economic development in low income countries - doesn’t really get to the poorest countries on earth. The United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) helps quantify a country’s progress in areas such as health, education, and general economic welfare. One might think that this would be a pretty good guide to foreign aid benefiaries. But the five most under-developed countries on earth only receive $186 million in aid from the U.S., about 7% of what Israel receives annually.

At more than $10 billion in 2005, Iraq alone accounts for 45% of our total foreign aid. So the U.S. is spending about half of its development assistance solving a problem that we helped create. Actually, if you look at the top 4 countries that we give assistance to, it reads like a who’s who of failed U.S. foreign policies: Iraq is devolving into civil war, Israel has lost our roadmap to peace, Afghanistan cultivates poppies and terrorists, and we have outsourced Sudan’s genocide.

The bottom ten countries on the HDI index are miserable, conflict ridden places. But are they better off with or without our so-called aid?

Sources: Statastic, Wikipedia, United Nations Human Development Report

Notes: The “least developed countries on earth” is based on the 2003 United Nation’s Human Development Index.  Several countries that might have appeared near the bottom of the HDI were not ranked in 2003, many because of recent conflicts.  Statastico would like to give proper credit to the abject underdevelopment of the following countries that may have made the top 10 most miserable places to be a citizen, had they been ranked: Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Monaco.  Ok, maybe not Monaco.

Today the New Economics Foundation ranked Vanuatu the happiest place on earth. To their credit, the innovative Happy Planet Index (HPI) tries to takes into account how well humans turn their resources into what economists like to call “utility” (or “happiness” to the rest of us).

The winner has a great location to be sure, and something in common with others in the top ten happiest countries: massive inequality. Most of the top fifteen happiest countries were in near the bottom of income inquality as measured by the Gini coefficient. You’d think that those folks would’ve noticed the disparity, but perhaps this is a new type of underclass that is just too busy “convert(ing) the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens.”

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*Notes: World Rank in Income Equality is based on the Gini Index available for 124 countries as ranked in the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report. Additional sources were used for Vanuatu, St. Lucia, and the Grenadines. No data was available for Dominica (#4 HPI) or Cuba (#6 HPI).

The Internet has been available in the developing world almost as long as it’s been here in the U.S. Internet cafes were popping up in Cameroon in the mid 1990s before the local Peace Corps volunteers even knew how to use them. Penetration rates, however, lag predictably behind the richer countries in the north. But the lack of telecommunications infrastructure is something of a blessing in disguise: developing nations have the potential to leapfrog technologies. Cell phones and VOIP prove easier than installing costly land lines, and there’s no need for telephone poles and copper cable if governments can create WiFi and WiMAX zones around burgeoning urban areas.

Wired Magazine recently featured a map with average prices for one hour of online access in Internet cafes around the world. Statastic used the average hourly price as a percentage of daily wages to provide a glimpse into the state of Internet access in a selection of low to middle income countries.

The chart below begs several questions. Could lowering the cost of public Internet access lead to higher usage rates? What is the demographic profile of the average Internet user in the developing world? Should multi-lateral donors subsidize the cost of public Internet access?

Among this small sample, D.R. Congo, Nigeria and Kenya are the three most expensive places for locals to access the Internet, relative to income. They also have some of the lowest usage rates. But these countries have several other characteristics in common: low literacy, high rates of corruption, and a high level of inequality. These countries may simply have a limited number of Internet cafes that cater to tourists, corrupt officials and the wealthy locals who are lucky enough to have an education and a job.

Brazil’s usage rates are surprisingly high. Perhaps Brazil’s high inequality can help explain how 14% of Brazilians have regular access to the Internet despite the fact that one hour in an Internet café costs nearly one sixth of average daily wages. Just who are those fortunate 14%?

Sources:
http://internetworldstats.com
WIRED Magazine, May 2006

Agricultural subsidies criticized in the Washington Post… but not very well

The Washington Post is running a series of articles that expose some of the true costs of agricultural price supports in the United States. Agricultural subsidies are indeed very bad. These subsidies hurt developing nations by artificially depressing global agricultural commodity prices for the crops that developing nations are desperately trying to export. Proponents who claim that such price supports help smooth price fluctuations ignore unintended consequences, and political rhetoric about “saving the family farm” is empty… as are most of the family farms.

Although the Washington Post’s first two reports are well researched, their data is often misleading, incomplete or anecdotal. An example comes from today’s article about the failure of our current system of price supports, also known as Loan Deficiency Payments (LDPs):

One who played it right last year was Michael T. Sullivan, who produces a million bushels of corn annually with his three sons in Franklin, Minn. He thrived even during the depressed post-Katrina market.

Well before the storm, Sullivan said, the family had arranged to sell three-quarters of its crop to a local grain elevator for about $2 a bushel. The practice, called “forward contracting,” is increasingly common and helps insulate farmers from the market’s routine ups and downs.

On top of their contracted price, the Sullivans got the subsidy: $292,054 for that same corn, according to payment records.

Sullivan considers the LDP a godsend, given the uncertainties of farming. “Without it, Main Street Minnesota would have no money to keep the economy rolling,” he said.

Great, lots of numbers in there. A million bushels. $2 per bushel. And the hardest hitting of all: $292,054 in subsidies. Wow, that’s a lot of subsidies American taxpayers are shelling out.

Problem #1: The numbers cited are production and income based. How much did the family actually net in 2005? $292,054 sure seems like a lot of money in government subsidies, but relative to what? It looks like the Sullivans would have earned about $2 million had they 1 million acres at the market price of $2 per bushel.

Readers would be more sympathetic to the Sullivans if the inputs to produce those 1 million bushels cost them $2.25 million, netting them only $42,054 in income, and only being cash positive because of those government price supports. But what if their costs were only $200,000? Then the Sullivans would millionaires, netting $2.09 million in 2005.

Problem #2: How does the Sullivan family’s subsidy compare to the average subsidy for a corn farmer in Minnesota? How about compared to the U.S.? Is this the average corn production for a farm in Minnesota? A million bushels sounds like a lot to me. But is it? I mean, I probably only eat 200 or 300 bushels a year. (Statastico really likes corn.) Of course this doesn’t matter, because of problem #1: we don’t know anything about their income.

Next, the Washington Post produced a colorful map that makes Iowa look like price support central for corn. Sure, most counties receive more $10 million is price supports for corn. But how much corn does Iowa produce? Well if you’ve seen Field of Dreams or Children of the Corn, you won’t be surprised that Iowa produces 18.8% of all U.S. corn. So the map is colorful, but it tells a deceptively simple story.

If you want harder hitting numbers, head to Iowa State University. Chad E. Hart reports that according to USDA projections, almost half of the market value of Iowa’s 2005 corn crop was made up of government payments. Now we can start to understand why those nations struggling to boost agricultural export walked out of WTO trade talks.

I’ll leave you with some data based in part on what the Washington Post Business section reported on Friday. If you take a look at how much the following countries pay in government support to farmers in 2005, you’ll see that every European paid $293.20 in agriculture support. Americans paid al total of $43 billion, or $145.40 per person. In contrast, the per capita GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa was only $575 in 2002. Statastico does not advocate transferring those agricultural subsidies to development. These subsidies should, however, be reduced to zero over time. Give Africa and other poor farmers around the world a chance to export, an incentive to develop, and above all, a level playing field.

Six teams remain in the World Cup, but one stands head and shoulder above the rest: Brazil. Unfortunately, Brazil’s beautiful game is not what deserves our attention. Brazil is among the most unequal nations on earth. The wealth concentrated in the richest 10% of the population is 68 times greater than in the poorest 10%. Income distribution in the two nations favored to take home the World Cup couldn’t be more different: Brazil’s wealth is ten times more concentrated than Germany’s.

Source: United Nation’s Development Programme Report