http://www.zerohedge.com/...lobal-wealth-distribution

tl:dr

people have money

any chance that they can expand the detail of my portion of the wealth?
i just want it to appear to be a bit bigger.

Good looking article... I started reading before I realized this was too long to read during a reasonable work break. To Be Continued...

always good that they give you some perspective of just how lucky you are coming from a country where $100k household wealth is considered lower middle class (for someone who's been working a few years.)

I think you have lived a privileged life. You seem to lack any understanding of what normal wealth is. The average (2010) gross income in the United States (the highest in the world) was about $53k. If you think $100 is lower middle class then you are completely unaware of the economic issues your country (whatever it may be) faces.

not sure why you think your comparison of income (per all people) to wealth (per adult) proves anything here. it doesn't take a completely unrealistic set of assumptions to go from $53k income to $100k wealth in 5 years either...

Ok, I admit I misread what you wrote. In fact I operated on the assumption that you misinterpreted the article as I noted that you might have confused the wealth with income... as it turns out that confusion only existed between my head and your post.

I think the only conclusion that can be drawn from that link is that Africa needs to join a netgaining alliance.

that is a lot of graphs.

A statistic from 2008 before we surpassed 7 billion people was as follows:

The top 1 billion people on earth make over $20,000 per year.
The next 1 billion people on earth make between $2,000 and $20,000 per year.
The bottom 4 billion people on earth make less than $2,000 per year.

According to this statistic, you can apply basic math and determine that making over $20,000 per year puts you in the top 83% of world earners. At the same time you earn more than 10 times the bottom 67% of the world.

You can Wikipedia something called 'the power law' and apply it to wealth disparity. By this law, for every person with $1,000,000, there must be 1000 people with only $1,000. It should also be noted that with a large sum of money to invest, you will not gain using basic addition, rather, you will gain in proportion to your percentage share of total capital. By this logic, and that of the power law, the rich do get richer and the poor do get poorer. Obviously, I have vastly oversimplified but the concepts I am presenting are straight forward. The feudal system serves as a good example of unchecked wealth disparity.

Funny how losers always want to leach of the rich, wanna be rich? come up with something people will use and buy, OR get educated and grow your networth by climbing the latter, damn you people who think we all should have what everyone else has, seriously...WHAT THE F U CK??????

@apo: it doesn't need to be phrased in such complex terms. Quite simply one has only to read the underlying concept of why we have economics:
We have *limited* wealth/resources. If one person makes more, others have to make less. It's as simple as that.

I simplify because the total amount of "wealth" in the world does increase via technology/productivity gains but those gainss are by far and away dwarfed by the amount of wealth "gained" by mid-top tier individuals.

Weather this is derserved or not is another question:P

This may be true but when the opportunity for advancement through education or trade is not made available to all of society, the effect is a reduction in the overall potential of society. If 67% of the world population earns less than $2,000 then subsidizing their education, for example, would more than double humanities potential for advancement.

@martian: !! :P

This isn't about people trying to get rich for nothing - it is about people wanting to just have a job and thereby get food and shelter. The problem is we live in a world that caters towards a few individual amassing all the wealth rather than letting people get basic necessities for survival.

This thread was made even more worthless with this statement.



Talk about horse chit pedaling.

No, what martian said is completely true. There is finite wealth. When someone gets some, that is less for everyone else.

I agree with Eric171, this article is graph heavy.

That write up was done 2 yrs ago. I want current stats. =P

My family came to the US with couple hundred $ in their pockets in early 80's, we all worked hard, were not rich but we live confortable, key word "work hard" thanx.

1) Hard work does not guarantee success. There are lots of hard working people who can not make ends meet. It is one of the most common fallacies of people who have things to assume that those who do not did not work hard.
2) The 80s are drastically different than now. If your family had come towards the end of the 70s they would probably still be in poverty. That is just based on how groups who start working during economic down turns never catch up.

Well if that story holds true for you (it is YOUR story) then it must be true for everyone else in the world! Great logic!

Detmer: Why would you lose your position in the conversation by contrasting the 80's and today. His example is one in a country with very high opportunity and a ridiculous reduction of the current discussion.


Here is how I read what KoHeartGPA said:

"My family (with at least one living adult) was able to reach medial success in a favorable enviornment (where average wages are near or above $20,000), so everyone else (the other 67% of the world earning less than $2,000 a year) should be able to, too!"

Inner voice:
"A child forced to work at age 12 to provide for his/her family could pursue higher education and achieve success - he/she is just lazy. If they would just stop wasting their money on food and shelter they could really get ahead. Those people just don't think long term. I know this because I am successful and I earned everything in my life."

I know dozens with similar stories.

Hmm, interesting, when i lived in Argentina i actually worked at age 12, nobody forced me, my friends had money from working and i wanted some too, instead of crying over the fact i actually embraced the idea of work and got paid and made money too, mowing lawns and taking out the trash for elderly people is quite rewarding in more than making money stand point, you should try it (if your're under age for legal work), you will appreciate it later in life when you know you can have it if you work hard, im just fed up with the new generation believing they should get a handout and not having to earn it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKie-vgUGdI



Kids get all sorts of odd jobs - I am glad your family is thankful you paid the rent and bought the groceries. Oh wait... that probably didn't happen did it? Making some pocket change as a kid has nothing to do with this.

"This generation" (whatever you mean by that) does not believe they should not have to earn a wage - no one believes that. There are more people who want to work hard for money than there are jobs. When hard workers exceed jobs then it is impossible for working hard to guarantee success. (not like hard work has ever guaranteed success, but it used to be a lot more helpful)

@KoHeartsGPA

You are talking about working for extra money while I was not. Extra money being the key word. You have shielded yourself with a magic bubble. Dozens of stories is a small number compared to the world population and the degree of separation from yourself of those stories is obviously one. Your data set is both small in size and scope.

fyi crest: no sound economic theory/regime contradicts my statement. Where the difference in views is
how should wealth be distributed

In pure capitalism the answer is: proportionned based the free market.

In pure communism the answer is: "equally" by the planning authority.

In practice societies range somewhere between the two.
Aslo we put restrictions on what can/cannot be part of the market (assasin for hire typically is not allowed:P)

We can debate endlessly what an "optimal" and fair distribution of wealth is.
Note that this has nothing to do with level of democracy.

You can change the amount of wealth in a system only by either increasing your access to resources (for the world you would have to grab an asteroid or something) or create "new" resources via technology.. Note that even if you have K wealth.. the population in practice doesn't collectively have K.. but something less than that.

and yes, if you do something to make the rich richer, the immediate effect is to make everyone else poorer. The argument in favor of this is that the rich will use the extra resources to increase the "K" I mentionned above and hence everyone gains. The counter argument is that this doesn't really happen to any noticeable effect.
I think that in practice it depends on who "the rich" are and what they decide to do. There are historical examples of both...

how much of that wealth was created just by charging interest on money that was loaned out?

and why does it matter, the money is worthless if there's nothing to spend it on.

Vampires (and the Catholic church) take advantage of compound interest, as shown in the movie "The Hunger" 1984 with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. One of my favorites :)

charging interest on money doesn't create wealth, it transfers wealth. Just like trading in the stock market.

The only difference is that if I"m borrowing money to invest in a business that is creating wealth then I get a share, and the loaner gets a share

If you live for 2000 years and sleep a lot, and have a good investment firm, you can transfer a lot of wealth to yourself. :)

I love this graph for the USA:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/...52312krugman3-blog480.jpg

This one is for Brazil:

http://media.economist.com/...ize/20111105_INC873_0.gif

+1

+10

That's irrelevant though given how high the potential use of the resouces of the world is relative to what we have right now. The world's problems now are harnessing all of the usable resources (not being done) and improving technology to create new resources.

I also think its unfair to say that rich getting richer is at the expense of everyone else. A lot of fortunes are made on the basis of wealth creation, ie increasing the resources we have access to or finding a way to use them better.

At the same time, serious wealth redistribution would be very beneficial overall for the world. Would help harness the resources of the world a lot better.

The key resources to create wealth are intelligence, energy, and life force. Therefore education and research are the key to wealth creation. There are fundamental discoveries yet to be made in energy (unified field theory, FTL stardrives, 100% energy transfer heat engines, "cosmic energy") and life force (biotech, genetic engineering, aging, telepathy, medicine). There will then be more wealth to distribute.