The era of colonial expansion had ended, and the Vienna Government's focus had returned to domestic affairs. Austria's most serious problem now was its uneven domestic economic development, with the gap between rich and poor continuing to widen.
Looking only at the per capita income of 64.6 Divine Shields, the figure was already far from low. Excluding children and the elderly, the average income of the labor force even exceeded one hundred.
Yet the reality was that major capitalists and great nobles earned tens of millions a year, while the vast majority of ordinary workers had an actual annual income of less than 30 Divine Shields.
Franz was also a beneficiary in this regard. As someone who had helped pull up the average per capita income, he now had no choice but to worry over the widening gap between rich and poor.
Take Vienna, for example. As the city with the highest per capita income in the world, Vienna's annual per capita income was as high as 328 Divine Shields.
In any country or region in the world, that income would place one above the middle class.
As Austria's financial capital, cultural capital, technological capital, and educational capital, Vienna possessed so many advantages that reaching this level did not seem strange.
Yet the statistics told Franz that this was merely surface prosperity. The problems beneath it had already become extremely severe.
Vienna had a population of 1.06 million, including 620,000 working-age laborers. Of them, fewer than 11.2% earned 328 Divine Shields a year; only 29.6% earned over 100 Divine Shields annually; and 24.6% earned less than 30 Divine Shields a year. (Labor force only.)
And this was the capital. There were already so many low-income people here; in other regions, the situation was likely even worse.
According to the compiled