Time to break out the guillotines again?
Richest 2 percent own more than half the world
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Two percent of adults command more than half of the world's wealth, while the bottom 50 percent possesses just 1 percent, according to a U.N. development institute study released on Tuesday.
Institute director Anthony Shorrocks said if the world's population was reduced to a group of 10 people, one person would hold $99 (50 pounds) and the remaining nine would share $1.
"The super-rich are even more grotesquely rich than 50 years ago," he said.
December 05, 2006
Richest 2% own half the world. Any questions?
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74 comments:
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalaalalalalalaalalalalalalaalalal
Keith I was the anon. above.
I always have a dificult time reading the first comment. The Title is on top of the first comment.
Yes, it's time. I say it all the time, but people call me an anti-semite when I say it.
At the bottom of the list came nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, with capital of less than $200 per head.
Still, many in the wealthy West are house-poor, with assets well below this number due to mortgages and other debt.
"Many people in high-income countries have negative net worth and -- somewhat paradoxically -- are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth," the report said.
The above is classic! Thanks Keith.
What puts a person in the top 2%? How much money do you have to have to be in this catagory? I bet there are probably a lot of people who read this blog who are in this group. These UN reports are usually laughable and designed to take money from the "rich" to help bribe and line the pockets of the truly rich.
Anyone who has taken Reaganomics 101 in College known that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Dav in jax lol, No, none of the top 2% post on this blog.
And the wealthiest are lending us exorbiant amounts of money!
That day is fast approaching.
That day is fast approaching.
Typical class warfare waged by the left.
What does your net worth have to be to be in the top 2%?
This is a symptom of a just society
Honica, its the top 2% and not the top .02% that the report claims to be talking about. I'm sure a lot of posters are in the top 2% of every person in the world. But nobody (most likely nobody) is in the elite .02%. When the UN puts out a report talking about the top 2%, they are trying to justify taking money from Americans. The UN would never criticize the top .02% because that's the group that is getting rich and controls the corrupt UN. It's much like the American media that talks about the top 2% in America being the rich. That number comes down to just about any family that makes $200k a year. But the media would never criticize the top .02% of Americans becaue it would cut into their power base.
Wait a minute Keith, I thought you'd supported Milton Friedman.
I admit to being in the top 2%. . .but look at it this way - in the bottom 98% are people who have from Zero to 999,999...but in my top 2% (I am just above the million mark)the range is from 1 Million to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates with 40 BILLION!!!!! And let me tell you, one million isn't a lot these days when you are retired. . .the interest at 6% is 60k and taxable at that.
The report says that $1M puts you in the top 1%. This would probably put the 2% level in the mid to high hundreds of thousands. Which, in a lot of places in the US, is not a lot of money.
Usury - making money from money - is the source of this inequality. Usury is prohibited in all revealed religions.
If it's a UN agency or think tank, then I believe it!
Who cares? It just proves that the bottom 50% of the people in the world are mega-losers!
Kill the losers! Cut their heads off!
I don't have a problem with some people having more than others so much as I do with the top 1/10th of one percent sending the rest of us off to do their dirty work, fight their wars, and dump their toxic spew. Those are the ones who should pay with their heads.
Keith, why did you dedicate a thread to Milton Friedman and now, tear down what he had supported?
Uncle Miltie was in support of insider trading and giving the rich, unbridled power to do what they want which as you know would be in forming oligopolies, stopping regulations/interventions, and in concentrating their wealth and power.
And here you were, criticizing the Fox news crowd.
I think we all need to look in the mirror. It's easy to get pissed at anyone richer than ourselves, those greedy, selfish money-grubbing rich! We work for our money, right?!
But anyone reading this blog is rich in the global scheme of things and should spend some time evaluating how hard people in developing nations work with no prospect of ever attaining the material comfort of even our lower-middle class.
Sorry, for preaching. I'm as guilty as anyone for resenting those who have more, rather than trying to understand and help those who have less.
:I'm as guilty as anyone for resenting those who have more
Sorry, but when there were good middle class jobs, which weren't getting offshored in mass, I wasn't resentful of anyone.
It's only when real jobs started disappearing yet hedge fund managers, management consultants, and CEOs comps started increasing, did I become resentful. You see, there is a disconnect between those who manage capital and those who actually produce the work with it.
I wouldnt mind being grotesq for a day ..it probally feels pretty dam good...
"I think we all need to look in the mirror."
I'm sorry, but I disagree. If the rich are able to oppress the poor with hegemony and military might due to their being born to money, the poor should be able to overthrow the rich and take what they want. The elites want you to be "civilized" so they stay in power. Bullshit! It is evolution. Some day the filthy rich will pay with their lives for the misery they've sown. Just deserts, I say.
Usury - making money from money - is the source of this inequality. Usury is prohibited in all revealed religions.
Maybe we should prohibit religion.
From the article:
"According to the study, a couple in 2000 needed $1 million in capital to number among the richest 37 million people in the world, the top 1 percent."
The top 2% out of 6 billion would be 120,000,000 people.
I happen to be in both groups and I read this blog
Now you've done it Keith. The Black Helicopters are en route. Sit tight and offer no resistance. Presdent Chelsea Rohdam-Clinton has ordered this action on advice of her parents the UN Co-Secretaries. The helicopters wuld have been here sooner from the future except they were busy travelling back to the 1970s to stave off Global Cooling. Look, with our price of gas approaching 68 cents per gallon you've pissed off a lot of us with all these wild speculations. As if our Trilateral Comission luncheons weren't hectic enough what with world domination on the agenda and JFK fighting Elvis over the extra shrimp cocktail... Your disappearence wil prove sticky. We've lined up a likely suspect in Greg Swann but there are just so many times we can go back to the "lone gunman" excuse. Just shut up and you'll find a little something extra in your adsense revenue account and it won't be denominated in those tear-off rolls of toilet paper you Americans call money, we're talking New World Order Aurobucks.
I would have to say HP'ers are rich with the knowledge of what we see coming and some or "hopefully" most here are preparing..so see we are the in the top 2% the other 98% are the ones with the ARMS that are about to reset next month..and think that the parade is going to continue..IE dumb F@ck no it all's, who frankly dont have a friggin clue.
Sometimes it seems that 2% of the readers on this blog write 99% of the posts.
Why do we always cast rich vs. poor as a function of annual salaries? "Wealth" is about assets minis liabilities. A middle-class family earning a combined $200,000 a year who owes more to their student loans, credit card debt and mortgage than the combined value of their house, cars and other assorted possessions (as defined by what those items would sell for used) cannot fairly be called rich by any stretch of the imagination.
Most Americans are poorer than third -world citizens. Do they have $100,000 in student loan debt? Do they have $10,000 in credit card debt? Do they have $500,000 in mortgage debt? Americans are not rich, they just live large.
I did not say I objected to the top 2% holding 50% of the world's wealth. I did not say I want any change here.
My point of the post is that when societies have found such a stark and obvious separation between the haves and the have nots, especially when the haves flaunted their wealth, social disorder sometimes followed.
Off with their heads!
So my question is - will you see rebellion now by the have nots?
Will Democrats raise taxes on the rich?
Will there be a revolution in China against the leaders and businessmen by the workers - a return to true communism?
Status quo will not last much longer folks. And yes, many of us are in the top 10% at least. So any "rob the rich and give to the poor" will effect many of us.
The math seems flawed – if the world’s population is now 10 people 2% of 10 people is one fifth of a person. This fractional person would have half the world’s riches ($100) that’s $50.and the other 9 and 3/5 people would share the other $50. roughly $4.80 per whole person. So shouldn’t it be .02% has half the world’s wealth? Which by no means is a good thing…
tutsies and huutus all over the world.
Will there be a revolution in China against the leaders and businessmen by the workers - a return to true communism?
The rural people of China, the M.E., N. Korea, and Africa might well lead the way. The status quo will probably end with horrific wars.
Keith, you are off in some dangerous territory here. I know that if I was born in the middle of some diseased third-world shithole I'd be plenty pissed off. Wouldn't you?
Was walking down the street the other day and a bum asked me if I could spare a quarter, I said "No, you're even, I'm in the hole."
An attempted revolution by the poor over the rich is taking place right now. Religion is the named focus of their discontent but rest assured that the real origins are economic.
paul e math,
Well said.
$1,000,000 net? In 2000 for the top 1%? After thinking about this for a while, you realize that the #'s make no sense. They are taking into account some isolated African tribes that have not even invented the wheel yet! Along with all the other ones that speak in clicks and grunts..... These people have no use for currency, hell they refuse to use rubbers even though they know every other woman has AIDS. Yeah, in order to get an accurate gauge, we would need to only include developed (and probably just white-Euporean if you actually want an accurate, meaningfull #) nations.
The U.S. could well tell the world to go eff themselves if we weren't pumping the oil out from under more than 70 different countries. We give tin pot dictators lavish riches and tell the rest to "eat cake". Don't anyone in this country try to tell me your hands are clean. We treat the discontent in the M.E. with depleted uranium and can't seem to figure out why they hate us. Are we really that stupid, or just greedy?
I need to respond to the last anonymous because I agree. I borrowed the below quote from another HPer weeks ago - he used it to explain why realtors sometimes don't realize that they are whores, don't realize that the housing market is tanking and it may well take the rest of the economy with it. The same can be said of why we don't realize the bad things we do to developing countries.
"It is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
Let’s step aside now for an anecdote:
The Thinker wrote, “Anyone who has taken Reaganomics 101 in College known that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.”
----------------------------
Back in Econ 101 in college, one day the professor spent a full lecture on Reaganomics. After the class ended that day, and everybody had left the room (it was an auditorium-sized classroom with ~200 seats), I walked up to the podium as the professor was collecting his papers.
“Here’s a question for you,” I said to him. “Why didn’t Reaganomics work? How come the ‘trickle-down’ theory didn’t spread the wealth like it was supposed to?” I asked.
I will never forget this man’s response. He turned his head both ways to make sure that nobody was within earshot, looked at me right in the eye, and said, “If I really understood economics and knew the answer, do you think I would be working HERE?”
-Mammoth
"I'm sorry, but I disagree. If the rich are able to oppress the poor with hegemony and military might due to their being born to money, the poor should be able to overthrow the rich and take what they want. The elites want you to be "civilized" so they stay in power. Bullshit! It is evolution. Some day the filthy rich will pay with their lives for the misery they've sown. Just deserts, I say.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006 8:02:35 PM
"
That's the reason for religion...
Religion keeps the poor people from killing the filty rich people.
Look at the 3rd would countries... Religion is used to keep 'em in line.
Interesting isnt it?
Paul E. Math said:
Religion is the named focus of their discontent but rest assured that the real origins are economic.
Keith says:
Brilliant post. Brilliant.
::So if someone has a $100k student loan, I'd consider them richer than someone in Ehiopia that has $200 worth of assets. The guy with $100k in debt now may have the tools to pay it back and earn far more with his new skills.
Yes, if that person has an MD or a Harvard Law degree then I'd agree, since that's a direct pipeline to a six figure salary, however, for a majority of loan holders, a part-time online U of Phoenix paper w/ almost no debt might have sufficed for the same purpose. You see, these types of subjective valuation on education et al is a type of 60s and 70s thinking where what you know is as important as who you know and nowadays, a lot of those rules for a multi-tiered first world nation are going away.
Of course the rich get richer - they keep doing the smart things that made them rich. And the poor get poorer because the dumb asses keep doing the stupid stuff that keeps them poor.
Look at the statistics on lotto jackpot winners. Most of the poor people who suddenly strike it rich are poor again within a year or two. I don't feel much pity for ignorant people who are too lazy to educate themselves.
It is true that a fool and his money soon part, however, not all who are parted from money are fools.
Yo thinker, what happened to your little friend the stinker?
You mean I only need $2200 to be in the top half of all households on the planet?!?
Shoot, I've got that in my wallet right now! I never knew I was so wealthy!!!
I'd imagine that this 2% spread corresponds roughly but not exactly to the skills and motivation of the affected individuals...
but it was the same voice that had said to him, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness..."
is it a crime to be rich Keith?
My, I have friends who own $1,000,000 in real estate, half of that in loans, does that count? They think they are millionaires, I think they are 1/2 a million in debt and the other half illusion, or as my dad always told me, just because it is on paper doesn't make it real. It is only real when you sell, if that equity still exists.
Still, the income inequalities in this world bother me. At what point is too much, too much? I definitely think CEOs make to much, baseball players, politicians, some doctors like neuro-surgeons don't make enough...would you rather pay $1,000,000 per pitch to a ball player or for the guy cutting into your brain?
Revolution becomes the question in any society that gets to the point where the worker isn't getting his fair share and we are reaching a critical point here because our 1% are more interested in profit than in social justice and will keep outsourcing, off-shoring, as long as their bottomline keeps going up.
If, or when, the house of cards of our current economic system in the US collapses, implodes, goes BK, or pours tens of millions of unemployed and newly poor middleclass into the streets, beware.
All we have to do is look at New Orleans post-Katrina for a taste of what the streets will look like then.
God help us all if corporations don't start dispersing some of those record profits to the workers instead of just the stock holders and the government needs to start helping reduce the tax burden on the middle class and not the rich.
Viva la Revolucion!
Well this is not suprising , since bill gates is richer than some 3 african countries put together ..
Keith,
You missed your target audiance with this one. Obviously, most other posters own the other 50% of the planet collectively so there aren't too many complaints here....
ANON
If the rich don't keep us grunts happy, we will sharpen up the guillotines. We WILL.
"Let them eat rent!"
Master Yoda, I am not afraid of the guillotine.
You will be. You will be.
Who has the portable guillotine this week? Bring it over to Mark in San Diego's house! Let's get this, er, ball rolling!
To paul e math:
Many Americans work hard at menial dead-end jobs and have no prospect of ever attaining the material comfort of even our lower middle class.
We toil, our employers and landlords enjoy the wealth we produce.
I want my piece of the pie!
Hello Losers!
From The 2%
I know a guy who came to this country as a legal immigrant in 1988 and worked his ass off 18 hours a day, seven days a week. His net worth is now over $4 million.
Off with his head!!!
Religion is the cause of all wars. Before religion existed, I bet there was no fighting or murders. Everyone was holding hands and singing Kumbayah around the campfire. We all know that atheists never lie, cheat, steal or do anything bad. They are the 100% perfect people who are tolerant of all others and everyone loves atheists.
Hmmm. I wonder if "off-with-their-heads.com" is taken?
:Before religion existed
Ok right there, give me a time frame?
Can you find a point in ancient history where there's no religion?
This is a rhetorical argument along the lines of a strawman. If you want to rail on secular humanism, try to actually make a case against it.
Ya know, A wise man once said:
Voilent revolution, is the only solution, to political corruption and government prostitution.
Maybe we should prohibit religion.
++++++++++++
Not prohibit, but treat religion as as if it is a political Party.
Extreme?
KILL THEM ALL.
I love the posts from people defending the status quo and criticizing those who seek a more equitable world as "socialists". They'd feel right at home in ancient Egypt, dying in the hot sun building a pyramid for the one guy with all the money.
I love the posts from the people calling for a more equitable world based on their own views of what will be equitable.
Who should make more money, a doctor or a welfare queen? the equitable person would say they both deserve the same lifestyle.
It's always the lazy scammers who call for redistribution of wealth.
No, I would say that an American who works hard and plays by the rules ought to be able to enjoy something above a bare-bones, paycheck-to-paycheck existence.
The doctor deserves more than that of the above person and the welfare queen deserves less than that.
a country not self sufficient in food production, needs more house builders for immigrants built on suburban farmland?
Doctors are practically a monopoly (AMA) which is why they earn so much and can keep it.
If the US opened its borders and let in all the docs (not just the ~15K per annum into residencies) from South America, China, and Russia, they could make the medical profession as unattractive as being a web programmer.
The end result is that if one doesn't own the means of his production, then he can always be driven to poverty despite all the hard work and effort. Part of the reason for socialistic initiatives is to recognize this fact (i.e. robber baronism of multinational corporations) and to insure that a certain percentage of the middle class always remain under any circumstance while at the same time, allowing the growth of small business so that corporate behemoths don't control all the products and services out there.
find you a slum condo at 1,000,000, the numbers just dont add up??!!
if the doctors were any good at their job, 4 pills a day for six months, would reverse ones aging process and revitalize all cells, and cost 500$ and stop all their work but for acciD ENTAL TRAUMA , OR 95% OF THEIR WORKINGS
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