

Richest 1% Is Likely to Control Half of Global Wealth by 2016 - tomek_zemla
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/business/richest-1-percent-likely-to-control-half-of-global-wealth-by-2016-study-finds.html

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Hermel
Considering that about 2 billion humans have a negative net wealth due to
debt, this is not surprising. If you don't have any debt, you are already
richer than the poorest 2 billion humans combined!

For more details why this statistic should not be trusted, see here:
[http://www.iea.org.uk/node/9980](http://www.iea.org.uk/node/9980)

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sctb
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910476)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8912298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8912298).

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davidsmith2015
The global cutoff for the top 1% in annual income is $34,000. (Not a typo.)
Different than wealth, but still revealing.

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jacquesm
So, who are the 1%:

[http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/](http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/)

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DanBlake
I always wish in these articles they would single out the top 1% of the 1% -
It definitely shows more of the issue since most doctors would be in the top
1%.

When you say "1/100,000th of the population has xx% of the wealth" it
showcases the issue at hand in a much clearer view.

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hatu
If you take the global richest 1%, pretty much everyone on this website gets
included. The cut-off point is at around $35,000 a year.

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knocte
>The cut-off point is at around $35,000 a year.

That doesn't sound true. Can you back up your argument with facts' data?

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maxk42
[http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-
tech/120331...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-
tech/120331/global-pay-scale-international-labor-organization)

Various sources from the past couple years cite between $34,000 and $37,000.

More than two-thirds of the population of the earth makes less than $1,000 a
year, so this shouldn't be very surprising.

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Arnor
I'm confused...

Sniff test:

    
    
        World pop: ~ 7,000,000,000
               1%: ~ 70,000,000
    
        Population of the US ~ 300,000,000
        Median income in the US ~ $50,000
    

So you can come up with well over 70 million people in the US with incomes
greater than $50,000. How then can the global top 1% cut off be $35k?

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maxerickson
Median personal income in the US is ~$35,000, I think you must have looked at
household. That $35,000 doesn't include people under 25. So the "7 billion"
median would be even lower.

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Arnor
You're right that I was looking at household income. Thanks for the
correction!

Still, that number doesn't seem accurate for the cut-off for the global 1%

2010 census has over 180,000,000 Americans over age 25. So assuming that there
are people making more than $35,000 outside the US, this number still smells
fishy...

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maxk42
Well the household income is not the incorrect number to look at. You just
have to divide that by the number of people in the household. Children,
elderly, disabled and others don't typically work. That makes the income-per-
individual lower than the "individual income" which only counts those that are
participating in the workforce.

Quickly looking at Wikipedia (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)
) I see that the median household income is $50,233 and there are 116,011,000
households in the US. A quick googling shows there are about 316.1 million
people in the US, yielding an average of 2.725 people per household. Dividing
$50,233 drops our previous income figure down to $18,434.12 per person.

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gesman
Negative View: 1% of people control half of global wealth.

Positive View: 99% of people control half of global wealth.

I guess it's a matter of perspective?

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heydenberk
Neither sounds very good.

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gesman
It's ok.

You belong to the group of people who control half of global wealth :)

