
What It Takes to Be in the 1% Around the World - siberianbear
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/a-global-guide-to-what-it-means-to-be-part-of-the-1
======
westiseast
I often chat with my wife (Chinese, runs her own business) about relative
wealth in her home country. She’s easily 1%, but living in big east coast
Chinese cities, it often feels like we’re pretty average, even sub-average.
The hundreds of millions of rural and urban poor are almost hidden from view.

~~~
ForHackernews
There's no upper limit and the right edge of the income distribution looks
almost exponential. Mere multimillionaires feel like paupers next to the
billionaires.

~~~
sametmax
Which makes sense, as it's a x1000 factor.

Millionaire is actually just a x100 factor from a middle class saving account.

Each time, the real difference is not the physical goods anyway. From middle
class to millionaire, it's the logistic that changes the most. You can live
free of many constraints.

From millionaires to billionaires, it's more a matter of impact in the world.
Having 100 luxury cars must be fun, but I can't imagine it changing your life
that much.

~~~
vidarh
> Having 100 luxury cars must be fun, but I can't imagine it changing your
> life that much.

But it's the gap from flying first class to owning private jets. Or renting a
large yacht or owning a small one to owning a super-yacht with two helicopter
pads and a sub (like e.g. Paul Allen's "Octopus" [1]).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_(yacht)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_\(yacht\))

~~~
sametmax
Again, all that doesn't change your life much. The difference in quality of
like is nowhere close to the gap you bridge when you can stop trying to make a
living and doing daily chores. You hit diminishing returns.

But being able to influence politics, the economy, and knowing personnally
many people that can, is a huge difference in what life you can experience.

~~~
mcv
At some point additional wealth stops buying you significant comfort, but
starts buying you significant power.

And to be honest, I think the area where that happens is a problem. I'm fine
with people enjoying a life of comfort, I'm not so fine with people buying
significant over others, over the society in which we live, simply because
they have more money. It's a danger to democracy.

~~~
sametmax
Any kind of concentrated power is a danger to democracy, but you can't setup
any system that can counter that, because it will just concentrate somewhere
else.

The only way to avoid this problem is for the people to actively, on their day
to day live, think and act toward the society they want to co-create. Power to
the people implies responsability for the people.

And we are nowhere near that. People don't want the responsability. They have
enough on their plate already with their personnal life issues. They don't
want to have to choose every day what to buy, what to read, what to watch.
They don't want to include the entire what they think society should be in the
process of choosing education, home or a job.

So they vote to delegate the power and responsability once in a while and call
the resulting oligarchy a democracy. Semantics is way easier than implementing
the real solution.

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ddoran
This article seems to focus on top 1% by income. Very few of the top 1%
earners in any developed country are also in the top 1% of wealthy people. The
truly wealthy tend to be so because of their capital/assets. Salary is an
utterly tax inefficient way to convert your life's work into personal wealth,
versus other forms of income/compensation.

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Blackbeard_
Having a country-wide 1% must pull it down in some cases.

For instance in the UK if you bought the $4.1m London home on a 25 year, 3%
mortgage, with a 25% deposit you'd pay about $170k per year. But after tax
your $290k "top-1%" income would be about $185k -- only just enough to even
cover your mortgage, forget about school fees.

I wonder what the London, NY, LA etc 1% numbers are? Surely that's a fairer
comparison to e.g. Singapore anyway, since it's a city-state.

~~~
breakbread
This piqued my interest.

At least according to this site [0] (which references a 2013 report [1]) for
instance, to be in the 1% in New York state you have to be making at least
$517,557. However, the average annual income of those in the 1% is $2,006,632.

In Mississippi, though, you only have to be making $264,952 to be in the 1%
and the average annual income of the 1% in MS is $565,813.

Of course, you have to consider cost of living and what not, but 1% is
definitely not the same everywhere.

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/12/how-much-you-have-to-earn-
to...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/12/how-much-you-have-to-earn-to-be-in-the-
top-1-percent-in-every-us-state.html)

[1] [https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-
us/...](https://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-us/#epi-
toc-3)

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Blackstone4
This reflects top 1% of income yet I'm not sure this is the best metric. It's
much easier to measure income than wealth....many of those in the top 1% of
income are probably not in the top 1% in terms of wealth.

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david-gpu
The tax information is way off, at least for Canada. I'm guessing they are
quoting federal taxes only, ignoring provincial taxes. In Ontario/Toronto, the
highest combined marginal taxes are around 54% [0]

[0]
[https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm](https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm)

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forkLding
I've been in Bahrain and UAE for many years, income and wealth inequality is a
real problem. A lot of the high earners are either sheikhs, landed nobility
and business people who have large businesses in oil, energy, etc. who had
opportunities open to them and could grab it while Bahrain or UAE was still
undeveloped. It is also why their high earners is so high up in rankings. This
coupled with the fact that these places are tax havens or pay much less tax
because the govt can rely on oil revenue means you can keep a lot more of your
income.

However, it seems there has been an economic downturn recently and taxes have
been increasing so the economic landscape of Middle Eastern countries could
change.

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MarkMc
Interesting that in Mumbai someone who just reaches the top 1% of earners must
pay 44% of their income to send one child to a private school, while in
Australia it is only 8%.

~~~
jeswin
I am not sure if that number is accurate (or which super-exclusive school
they've taken as reference). Private School fees depend on the institution and
the grade you're in, and varies from $5-25K.

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plg
top marginal tax rate in Canada is way higher than 33%

~~~
siberianbear
Yes, I had that same impression reading that chart. The top marginal tax rate
in California is 13.3% and the top federal rate is 37%, so the top total tax
on earned income is 50.3%.

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sametmax
What's the number for the 1% world wide ?

~~~
AJRF
$32,400 According to Global Rich List -
[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/05061...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

I'm sure that shifts a bit from year to year

~~~
sametmax
It's funny to think a lot of the « We are the 99% » are probably actually part
of a class of people that are the 1%.

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klohto
Bloomberg could at least once publish more than a few regions when using
"Around the World".

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electricityUser
I am going to become a Nanny in Monaco then ...

~~~
sametmax
Working in Monaco without being from Monaco does not grant you the same
benefits. Besides, it's a really, really boring city.

~~~
Kurtz79
Even if it were true, it is 30 minutes from Nice, from the Italian border and
within an hour of some of the best beaches in the Mediterranean...

