Thursday, November 24, 2016

Those dirty filthy one-percenters

Here's an arresting snippet sent to me from the Economist:

Global wealth distribution: Where you fit in
If you had only $2,220 to your name, you might not think yourself terribly fortunate. But you would be wealthier than half the world’s population. With $71,560 or more, you’d be in the top tenth. If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400, as 18m Americans do, you are a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against. Some of those railing against the global elite probably do not know they belong to it

7 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

Hilarious.

granddad said...

Is that NZD or USD?

Lindsay Mitchell said...

US I expect. I have added the link to article.

Mark Wahlberg said...

While Everything changes, everything remains the same.

Back in the sixties when my friends and I rode motorbikes,other than the obvious, we valued nothing but the brotherhood of the "gang" and were known as "One per-centers.

Today, most of us have moved to the other end of the social/financial scale and remain "one per-centers." the treadmill of life takes no prisoners.

Don W said...

Many of the richest people in the world are socialist tyrants, Kleptocrats whose fortunes have come from robbing people of their own money, keeping them in a state of abject poverty. Those rotters are the global elite that should be railed against .

paul scott said...

I feel lousy now. I am only in the 2% class.

Tim Bulkeley said...

If the top 10% own assets worth anything over US$71,560 and that 10% own 89% of the pie how much of the pie might the top 1% own?

If this distribution of assets (which correlates well with opportunities) were represented in your local school families would it still seem right?

We all agree inequality is unavoidable, most people think extreme inequality which is self-perpetuating is wrong (to see that it is to huge degree self-perpetuating think of the opportunities the children of top 1% and bottom 90% have) but how extreme does inequality need to be before we say it is wrong?