Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktNo, seriously. if you make more than $34,000 per year, you’re in the top 1%.
In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. In Australia, the top 3% of households earn more than $250,000 per week, according to the ABS. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?
$34,000.
That was the finding World Bank economist Branko Milanovic presented in his 2010 book The Haves and the Have-Nots. Going down the distribution ladder may be just as surprising. To be in the top half of the globe, you need to earn just $1,225 a year. For the top 20%, it’s $5,000 per year. Enter the top 10% with $12,000 a year. To be included in the top 0.1% requires an annual income of $70,000.
Not only am I in the top 1%, I’m just at the cusp of being in the top .1%, if I only look at gross income. I’m clearly wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, yet I still wince every time I fill up my gas tank.
The OWS who had her $5000 laptop stolen—that laptop represented half-a-year’s income to someone right at the nadir of the top 10% of earners in the world.
Not pointing fingers (well, except at our foreign aid, which clearly needs to be reserved for nations where contract law is enforced and it’s possible for citizens to own private property and build up equity), just sayin’ . . . it’s good to keep things in perspective.
How would you view someone making $350,000 per year who was out in the streets protesting those making $35 million per year, because those super rich folks could afford yachts and private jets and had the financial security that came with owning multiple houses in different countries, and the merely wealthy could only afford one vacation home—and could only lease time on a private jet, but could not own their own?
I doubt there’d be a lot of sympathy for the folks topping $350k or $500k a year, protesting those making tens-of-millions.
Yet to most of the world, that’s what the OWS people look like. Or would look like, if they could afford cable, television, internet, newspapers, or literacy.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
"How would you view someone making $350,000 per year who was out in the streets protesting those making $35 million per year"The comparison might be valid if there were a system of government limited to those people. I also wonder how rapidly those figures change; as the masses in China, India, Brazil & Indonesia see there standard of living rise while ours is static, that $34K figure will go up & more of us will fall into the 99%.
LikeLike
The comparison might be valid if there were a system of government limited to those people.It's a comparison for the sake of providing perspective (or for me to personally contemplate my own perspective), rather than one looking for a direct one-to-one relationship of every datapoint. In other words, it's a valid as a thought experiment. I think the differences are interesting an illuminating, but not disqualifying. Also, invalidating a comparison due to the lack of a system of government (or a nation state) limited to the super-rich and the super-super-rich suggests to me that, in such discussions, the goal posts are moved (perhaps by both sides) with a great deal of caprice.
LikeLike
My point is that the system protested by OWS has control over us, not the rest of the world. 'We the people' refers to Americans, not the citizens of the world.
LikeLike