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Common Dreams reports
The world's richest 1 percent now own more wealth than [the remaining] 99 percent combined. This finding comes from Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report for 2015, [redirects to a PDF] released last week. Last year, Credit Suisse found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 48 percent of global wealth. According to the new report, the [richest] 1 percent now hold 50.4 percent of all the world's household wealth.
Credit Suisse's findings are in line with Oxfam's prediction that global wealth inequality is only becoming greater. Last January, we predicted that the richest 1 percent would capture more than half of all household wealth by 2016. It looks like our prediction was right, but that we were too conservative, since it has happened a year early. Alas, our forecast was confirmed, but it's nothing to celebrate.
When you look at the very top of the global wealth pyramid, the situation is much more alarming. When we first calculated in January 2014, the 85 richest individuals own more wealth than the poorest half of the planet. This trend has also worsened since that time. Last January, it was down to 80 people.
The implications of rising extreme wealth inequality are greatly worrying. The highly unbalanced concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer and fewer people impacts social stability within countries and threatens security on a global scale. It makes poverty reduction harder, threatens political inclusion, and compounds other inequalities.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Eunuchswear on Sunday October 25 2015, @09:23AM
This is the richest 1% globally.
I.E. people with an income of over about $34,000.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @03:26PM
This is the richest 1% globally.
I.E. people with an income of over about $34,000.
How did you get a +5 informative for being completely wrong?
From the report itself:
"a person needs at least USD 68,800 to belong to the top 10% of global wealth holders and USD 760,000 to be a member of the top 1%"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Sunday October 25 2015, @04:32PM
Wealth vs Income. [investopedia.com] He is technically correct. Everyone in the US that doesn't earn minimum wage is pretty much in top 1% income of the world.
If it wasn't for the cost of living you could accumulate that level of wealth pretty easily within one lifetime. And in fact quite a few people with 401K retirement plans do have that much by the time they retire, but they make 2 to 3 times that level of income due to the cost of living being pretty high.
I got a feeling some income redistributors won't be happy till we all live in mud-huts and spread cow-shit all over our bodies once a week to keep the mosquitoes at bay. They are Cultural Revolution level fanatic, and they drive the discourse to the gutter so pungently that it scares away any legitimate discussion. Maybe they are scabs for the .1% :/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @05:12PM
> He is technically correct.
Yes, a technically true fact that doesn't address the point, instead distracts from it. I like to call such things "true lies."
> I got a feeling some income redistributors won't be happy till we all live in mud-huts and spread cow-shit all over our bodies
That's on you, not them. It doesn't even pass the laugh test. Sounds like it comforts you to believe that so you won't have to face their actual issues. Just like people who use the terms feminazi and SJW.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @09:12PM
Just like people who use the terms feminazi and SJW.
Or people who carelessly throw around terms like "patriarchy" and "misogyny".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @10:27PM
> Or people who carelessly throw around terms like "patriarchy" and "misogyny".
You know, those words have actual legitimate meanings while feminazi and SJW were created by people to let themselves brush off criticism of things they liked.
(Score: 1) by MorePower on Sunday October 25 2015, @06:12PM
Considering that the United States has about 4% of the world's population, I seriously doubt "Everyone in the US that doesn't
earn minimum wage is pretty much in top 1% income of the world."
And that's before you add in all the Canadians, Europeans, Japanese, etc that all live roughly on par wealth-wise with the U.S.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 26 2015, @02:13AM
A lot of people in the US don't earn minimum wage. I mean they may be paid that if they are lucky to have a job, but they will not work 40 hour weeks, I guarantee that. When you account for labor-force participation plus the amount of people actually working full time, non-seasonally, you get close to that number. Regardless it might not have been extremely accurate, I can concede that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @06:14PM
You will have to prove that point.
If it weren't for that pesky dying thing you could be immortal.
Just because you type something and say it is a fact does not make it so. Again, another point of your argument that must be proven.
Okay time to stop. If you want to prove a point, or even have anyone that does not already align with whatever view you are trying to communicate, you must provide a cogent argument. Your writing is not cogent. It is not even valid. Consider your thoughts being rejected by the human mind's compiler with a list of errors longer than your post itself.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 26 2015, @02:31AM
Yes keep trying to spin your tale because you just found out you were using the boogie men of 1% for months (if not years) to run your mouth on the Internet without ever actually realizing some people consider you to be in it. I know it's hard to come to terms with that fact without making your own head explode, so I suggest some coping mechanism which you no doubt are familiar with: denial.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @06:10PM
The mean hourly income for 1 person in the world is ~2.50. It is not a big stretch to think where I sit I am in the top 1% of earners at 60 an hour. Do I come close to the elite 1% of the 1%? Not even close. They make more along the lines of 250+ an hour. Many of them paying more taxes in 1 year than I and my whole entire family will pay in my lifetime.
People do not realize the scope of what 7 billion people is and how few make more than 10k USD a year.
I like this video because it describes the scope very nicely. His point is also valid that to make wealth disparity disappear you have to help these people in place. I disagree with many of his other points. But this one is a good one. Wealth disparity is why we are talking about this in the first place and why people try to move around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE [youtube.com]
The point he is making is you can help 5 million people a year and not put a dent in anything and can in many ways make the actual problems MUCH worse.
There is no 'here is a magic elixir that will fix this'. You are dreaming if anyone on this board thinks they have the answer. Basic income (another name for min wage) or asset redistribution (taxes) will not fix it. Neither supply side or demand side economics can make sense of it (we have tried both). How do we get people to get the money going? How do we get them to build things? How do we get people to create assets instead of wasted money? There is no easy answer.
Also the article is a bit misleading. This is actually 'back to norm'. People do not quite realize the scope of what that bank meltdown meant in 2008.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday October 25 2015, @06:42PM
I am pretty clearly in the top 1% of global wealth (measured by assets > USD 760,000), but I don't feel wealthy, nor secure in my position. Almost anyone living in the SF Bay area who was lucky enough to buy a house in the right place at the right time (and was able to weather the great depression in late 2000's) will be in the top 1% now.
The real issue is the share of global wealth by the super-rich.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 26 2015, @02:20AM
Indeed, the problem with this type of us versus them shenanigans is how inaccurate slapping a number on something can be. If you have a house in Bay area, congrats you made the list if you paid off your mortgage. Of course you need to live there so unless you sell your house this wealth doesn't do you so much good. Where as the same amoutn fo wealth in another part of the country would mean you literately don't have to work the rest of your life if you stick to sound investments and non extravagant lifestyle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @05:25PM
Well, you could sell your house and move, if you wanted. Living in the Bay area is a choice.
I normally hate those "living in area X is a choice" type arguments, because they usually apply to poor people without the assets to move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @09:45PM
how did you get a +5 for being completely wrong?
fake wealth held in assets etc is meaningless. what matters is income and purchasing power
apparently the lessons of 1999 and 2007 have been completely ignored
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @01:47AM
Also, it's pretty irrelevant. Wealth follows a logarithmic distribution. So if it needed to be refined to the "top 0.5% of the world controls 40% of the wealth" who gives a shit. The problem is still real.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday October 26 2015, @02:17AM
Well if people start bringing the pitchforks, the difference between 1% and .05% will become very real to say .5% of the people.
But I do agree that it is meaningless to draw such a fuzzy line around a catchy number. There are plenty of super rich people who are only rich on paper because their so called wealth is tied up in the companies they run, and depending on how these companies are run we may actually consider them our benevolent overlords. They might take care of the needs of their employees so well in fact, that their employees are in top 1% of income earners in the world!
(Score: 1) by PocketSizeSUn on Sunday October 25 2015, @06:05PM
Or pretty much everyone working in Zurich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @11:30PM
Heartland Institiute? Seriously? Do you think no one knows who these Bozos are? I would say "citation needed", but in this case your citation has just torpedoed your credibility. But at least I now know what Eunuchs wear!
(Score: 3, Informative) by SanityCheck on Monday October 26 2015, @02:38AM
Here [globalrichlist.net] have fun with that then. It's actually pretty neat. Unless you think that CARE International [wikipedia.org] are douche-bags as well.