Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source — next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
Friedrich Engels 1876
This map is a cartogram where the original shapes of each territory mapped is proportional to the variable mapped. Values for more than 200 territories are used to create the map. That number of figures is far too big to be able to take in at a glance. However the brain’s visual processing skills are phenomenal, and presented as a picture you have no difficulty with that number. Before you look at a particular map, you usually have some ideas about the subject. Some of those ideas may be confirmed, other things may surprise you. You, not the cartographer, not the statistician, decide what is most striking about the figures.
