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Geography, World  The Extreme Disparities of State Revenue
Submitted by on March 8, 2011 – 4:08 pm One Comment |  
Everyone knows that vast disparities of wealth and productive
capacity separate the world’s richest countries from its poorest
ones. It is thus no surprise to learn that the per capita GDP of
France ($34,092) is 100 times greater than that of the
Democratic Republic of Congo ($340). Less widely appreciated is
the fact that the size of national governments, as measured by
state revenue, varies even more. In 2010, governmental revenues
in France totaled $1.24 trillion, whereas those of DR Congo came
in at a meager $700 million. The French government, in other
words, took in fully 1700 times more money than did that of DR
Congo, a country of roughly the same population. Clearly
governmental economic disparities are much greater than general
economic disparities.  The revenue gap betw