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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: 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.