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Richest 2% Own Half the World's Wealth
kop writes "The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute. Most previous studies of economic disparity have looked at income, whereas this one looks at wealth — assets minus debts. The survey is based on data for the year 2000. Many figures, especially for developing countries, have had to be estimated. Nonetheless, the authors say it is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken." The study itself is available from the World Institute for Development Economics Research.
Look at the duck world. Scrooge McDuck had enough money that he could swim in it!
My work here is dung.
It's not an Onion story?
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
That's interesting. So convenient on your part. I would venture to say that if you made more money (I'm assuming you're not currently), somewhere in the $60k+ range, you wouldn't have this attitude. Would you like the government to give your money away forcefully to someone else just so that it's "fair?" Why should the government be in charge of this? And what's to stop them from becoming corrupt in this which is more than likely to happen? Power like this always corrupts...you place way too much faith in a system that doesn't work because people are people. Something like capitalism, although far from perfect, allows the greedy to get what they want and it gives a non-law regulated way for anyone to also work hard and earn their wage. Communism would only work in a perfect society. Your views are very dangerous and convenient.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
As I once learned a bit about the development of Japanese culture, the fact that they live on an island with very few natural resources that world considers to be useful or otherwise valuable, much of their cultural values developed around an appreciation for other things which I find not only admirable, but inspiring as well.
In my own life, I have learned to divest myself of debt financing and to save and survive with more focus on needs and less on wants. I definitely pay a lot less attention to pop culture marketting. Having grown up very poor as a child does make the adjustment easier and somewhat more natural for me, but I am definitely not an unhappy person.
Among the things that no longer hold any direct personal value for me are things like diamonds, gold or other things that do not directly enrich my life in any meaningful way. In short, I value the practical and all but ignore the impractical, useless shiny things in life. I doubt I'll see the world's culture shift in this direction within my lifetime, but if we were to simply stop valuing many of the things we currently value, much of the world's wealth would simply lose value.
That has to be the most ignorant post I have ever read and I have read a few. Open your eyes to look beyond the realms of your own limited vision. Most poor people have no choice but to live hand to mouth. And I don't mean trailer-park-poor but living-on-a-handful-of-rice-a-day-if-your-lucky-po or. Do you invest half of that rice in bonds or stock? Ignorant bastard.
It was worth the karma loss.
The richest 2% pay considerably more than 2% of taxes, however. They are disproportionately heavily taxed. I believe in the US, for example, the richest 1% bear 18% of the total tax burden.
Do they have more than 18% of the income (including capital gains, interest etc) and/or own more than 18% of the assets?
This is to be expected. People work disproportionately as well. High intelligence is distributed in a very similar curve.
The real reason that it seems to be getting more and more exaggerated is because the overall wealth/economy of the nation has continued to grow. This means that more people are able to afford to survive, to get health care, to be in a place where they can fill out these census instead of working their arses off or just trying to stay warm. Think back to the 1900s, or even late 1800s. People that were just scraping by would often not even survive. But really that's all besides the point.
Who cares if we have ridiculously rich people? What does it matter? It doesn't stop you from achieving your goals, you have to work to get there and earn your way the same. Just because there are enormously wealthy people doesn't mean you're prevented from acquiring wealth yourself. in fact, it makes you all the more likely to be able to get rich. These people if they want to stay wealthy, or grow their funds, must use it in some way. Maybe just earning interest in a bank, maybe investing in startup companies. Either way that money becomes a tool banks/companies can use to generate more wealth, and you can get in on that.
Quit being so classist. Just because others have done well doesn't mean you can't, but you surely can't if all you do is gripe about how you deserve more money without doing anything to earn it.
Try comparing with 50 years ago instead of 500. Then we have not made progress, but taken many step backwards in social equality.
Really? By what measure? More people own their own homes. Unemployment is lower. Even lower income families have things that would have been considered utter luxuries 50 years ago (multiple televisions, cell phones, cable, cheap antibiotics, cheap fresh food of every imaginable kind, etc). What does "social equity" mean to you - that someone who is successful should not have a flatscreen TV until everyone does? Or that incredibly wealthy pro basketball players shouldn't be allowed to spend their cash until everyone can spend the same amount of cash?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Free market economies do not "just happen" to distribute wealth. It goes to those who work, in proportion to how hard they work and how skilled they are.
I'd like to believe that, sir, I really would. Except I know that free markets are not really as free as we'd like to believe. By and large, the extremely rich maintain and increase their wealth through a number of mechanisms. They have connections. They know politicians, and other heads of industry. They enact protectionist laws. The reason lawyers and doctors make so much money is that they have erected barriers to entry to their professions. To practice law, one must attend an expensive law school before being allowed to take the bar. Along with the needless complexity of the court system dictates that leagal endeavors will be very expensive. The medical profession is very similar. While I don't dispute that quality surgery is likely to be expensive, day to day medical care should not be. Doctors, however, stand as the gateway between the people and most medications. I suffer from excema. About once a year, I need a new tube of cream to treat the occasional outbreak. The tube costs $4.15, but I have to pay for a $200 doctor visit before I can get one.
And of course, the rich generally begin life with a great deal of wealth. They have access to better nutrition and schools. They inherit the business connections of their fathers. They attain positions of power not through merit, but as an accident of birth. Which also implies that my own child is just that much more unlikely to attain those positions of power. There are a lot of policy changes that can be made to rectifiy this sort of situation. Eliminate protectionist laws. Reinstate the estate tax. Actually, just treat it as any other taxable gift, because that's what an inheritance is: A gift you make when you die. Eliminate incentives for the poor to remain poor. There are far too many of them to list here. Just a few ideas anyway. I don't mind the rich getting rich on their own merit. But for every James Sinegal (Costco founder) out there, there are 100 asshats riding on daddy's (or grandpa's) coattails.
No, that would be really dumb. It would further discourage people from saving money, and push everyone even further down the road towards paycheck-to-paycheck living. (Or worse, to debt-maintained living -- unless you want to tax debt?)
Now I agree that it's rather bizarre that we don't just tax capital gains as income; actually it's bizarre that we don't just tax all income as income, and do away with all the little niggling special categories -- if it was someone else's money and now it's yours, that's income, tax it at the same rate.
People shouldn't be taxed on money that's sitting around and not doing anything, or on the principal value of property. If an investment makes money, then they should get taxed on it -- immediately in the case of dividends, or when they cash-out in the case of capital gains. But taxing "wealth" in the form of unrealized capital gains would result in people's retirement/college/savings funds just magically shrinking, year after year. It would basically be telling people: "use it or lose it."
That's not a smart road to go down, because when you discourage people from saving, you're just going to end up having to bail them out later, when they're 65 and broke because they didn't bother to save money for retirement. (I suppose you could pull a Logan's Run and kill them, but I'm going to make some assumptions here.) Rather than letting individuals run their own lives, you're heading down the road to a centrally planned economy, where because nobody can afford it on their own anymore, they have no choice but to depend on the government for everything.
Furthermore, you'd also discourage property ownership (which is one of the keys to social stability), and instead favor people who maintain a low "wealth" by constantly matching their stream of income to their stream of expenses, even when it's obviously not sustainable. Anyone who wants to could probably zero out their 'wealth' by just spending more on services and other items with little residual value. As long as they stay employed, they can maintain a high quality of life -- but the second that they have a gap in their income stream, because they don't have any savings, they fall flat. And then it's back to the government for a bailout.
Wealth-based tax schemes lead directly to heavy government dependency by the entire populace, and encourage personal finance schemes that aren't sustainable or productive in the long term. You might think that it's eliminating one form of classism, but instead you'd just replace it with the classism of a Politburo: a small number of bureaucrats managing all of society's savings and wealth. No thanks.
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