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Income Inequality Worldwide

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It's hard not to believe that someday this situation will end badly for everyone.
From the article:
The distribution of global wealth has stayed just as skewed as last year, according to a huge study by Credit Suisse.

The bank compiled data showing that just 0.7% of the world's adult population owns almost half of the world's wealth, while the bottom 73% have less than $10,000 each.

Here is Credit Suisse:

"The 3.5 billion adults with wealth below $10,000 account for 2.4% of global wealth. In contrast, the 33 million millionaires comprise less than 1% of the adult population, but own 46% of household wealth.
businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-wealth-pyramid-2016-11
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Comments

  • (Note: this is sarcasm folks)

    No worries. A billionaire prez with bad hair says he's gonna fix that.
  • edited November 2016
    @Mark - Geez that's unfair. Didn't you see his lunch bucket and overalls?

    We're supposed to label sarcasm now? I'll have to buy a "season-pass".
  • @Hank - true dat on the season-pass.The line forms behind me. There's been a rash of thin-skin cases lately and I thought that I should also spell it out for those in the deplorable camp. As for my thoughts on the prez, well this is a family oriented board so I'll refrain.
  • When exactly was there wealth equality?



    image

    Oh! right.

    Income inequality - a bad thing. Then ... there is that.
  • edited November 2016
    @DanHardy

    Yes. There was NEVER any income equality. Take any form of Government or Economic System. The problem is never with the design as it was intended. It was always in the implementation. The people at the top always subvert it for their benefit. They always remember have they have been "oppressed" under the old system waiting for their turn to "give it" to the other side. Sometimes, it is gradual degeneration of Society. Like in our case, Capitalism becomes bastardized into Objectivism and people in a Democracy suffer as much as they did under Feudalism, and it is all done under the garb of anti-communist agenda.

    Same liquid, new bottle. The difference is some of us have shame, have internet to share that, and some never will and will use internet to lobby its not a problem.
  • Just give all your money to the govt and let them dole it out equally to all. End of wealth inequality.




    No thanks.
  • @John, Yes, because we all know there are only two choices--share everything or winner take all. Do you still watch black and white television?
  • While I worry about affording retirement, it was sobering to see how far up the pyramid my savings have put me.
  • "Yes, because we all know there are only two choices--share everything or winner take all. Do you still watch black and white television?"

    Not since around 1974, but we still had a black and white till the early 80's.

    Lame stream Media is under the heat lamp at the moment. I'll take it easy on ya.
  • edited November 2016
    Some data dates may vary from original link from Lewis's graphic, and other data included with varying date stamps.


    Wiki/Millionaire data


    Enter your numbers and find your global ranking.....no guarantee on who is running the numbers base, eh?

    https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/?country=USA&income=100000&adults=2&children=0

    http://www.globalrichlist.com/
  • While I worry about affording retirement, it was sobering to see how far up the pyramid my savings have put me.

    https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Culture_of_Fear.html?id=B9AWBQAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&hl=en

  • @catch22,

    While ranking ones self on a global scale, it should be compared to the cost of living in that country or region as well. $100k is a good income but that would be strained in places like Manhattan or San Francisco. Many international cities like Tokyo or Geneva are higher up on the scale of cost of living.

    As incomes rise in these areas, the cost of living usually follows suit.
  • edited November 2016
    Hi @JohnChisum
    Oh yes, I agree. Our cost and standard of living in our part of Michigan is very comfortable compared to many places. Know a few folks who lived and worked about 15 miles from Manhattan, their home being in New Jersey. Their property taxes and what it cost to hire someone for yard work and related is a whole other work to where they retired to in Michigan.
    I placed a link a few years ago here that allowed one to compare the cost of living in one city versus another. I have been to two Manhattan's in the U.S. They are different worlds indeed. The other Manhattan being Kansas.
    If not one else offers, I will find the compare link and post.

    EDIT: not the site I used before, but interesting although limited to city choices. This link compares pricing if moving from Manhattan, KS to the NYC/Manhattan area.
    Note: my link will not link for entered data. Have to enter your choices.

    http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx

    Got to get some sleep time.......early and busy day tomorrow.
    Take care in your part of the world.
    Catch
  • Or vice-versa.
  • @DanHardy
    Worry has an incorrect connotation for how I'm looking at retirement. Wonder is probably more accurate. Not only do I wonder what's going to happen, I find it some sort of "wonder" that I have this to consider at all. When the heck did this happen?
  • @Crash22

    Good link. I compared San Francisco and Abilene TX. Worlds apart, especially home prices.

    Speaking of California, are they the only state that taxes you even though you moved out? A lot of retirees move to AZ, NV, etc to enjoy retirement with a cheaper cost of of living. California figures they need to tax anything you made in CA, even if you do not reside there. This includes IRAs and 401s and pensions. I call it taxation without representation. This practice should be abolished.
  • edited November 2016
    @JohnChisum

    Just give all your money to the govt and let them dole it out equally to all. End of wealth inequality.

    No thanks.

    Sorry bud, but this is exactly the problem. Everyone who comes here know why they come here. Everyone is not looking for a handout, and this kind of rhetoric fuels "communism" fears.

    The problem is about fairness. I don't mean to start a war but there are a just too manyr eality tv show stars who should be on food stamps and some educated folk who shouldn't. Livable wage is about decency in society, not a handout. Drug companies, doctors, lawyers, lobbyists and people in government contribute to opoid abuse rendering people homeless while enriching themselves. THIS IS A FACT and is IMO a big reason why the "war on drugs" is being rolled back. It is not just a certain class of society that's suffering any more.

    Distractions such as men shouldn't have invented washing machines and women should be living in the stone age, from an advisor to the president, is an orthogonal distraction which contributes to apathy about the issue of income inequality.

    Why is the conversation so complicated? If you have played unfair and earned your billions that's as wrong as someone who is able-bodied and just looking for a handout. The problem is we aspire to be the former and detest the latter and that IS a problem.
  • DanHardy said:

    While I worry about affording retirement, it was sobering to see how far up the pyramid my savings have put me.

    https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Culture_of_Fear.html?id=B9AWBQAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&hl=en

    I will not be able to retire. I will have to figure out how to keep earning something all the time. I've resigned myself to that. I will never take the Europe, Vegas, Cruise trips. I'm not complaining not craving it. I am focusing in giving my kids the best education money can buy and preparing them for the fact there may not even be a will for them to not be in it. That's the most I can do. After that if they F up, they cannot blame anyone. Because they don't have to be millionaires to be successful.

    One just needs to look at that pyramid that started this conversation. I think all of us should stop complaining and shut up. We are f*****g lucky b******s.

  • Speaking of California, are they the only state that taxes you even though you moved out? A lot of retirees move to AZ, NV, etc to enjoy retirement with a cheaper cost of of living. California figures they need to tax anything you made in CA, even if you do not reside there. This includes IRAs and 401s and pensions. I call it taxation without representation. This practice should be abolished.

    California has a lot of quirks in its tax code. For example, it, along with NJ and Alabama, tax HSA contributions. But does it really tax non-residents on IRAs they funded while in Calif.?

    Their current (2015) 540NR instructions for filing nonresident and partial year resident income tax returns say:
    Line 15 – IRA Distributions Taxable Amount)
    California resident amounts – Enter the taxable portion of the IRA distributions received while a California resident.
    ...
    California nonresident amounts – IRA distributions received by a nonresident are not taxable.
    Pretty much every state taxes income with a nexus to that state even if you don't live there. For example, if you own rental property in California, the income that generates will be taxed by California. But likewise, pretty much every state you might live in will give you a credit against your resident income tax for the income taxes you pay to another state.

    Maybe Calif. does have a particularly long arm reach on its taxes, but it doesn't look like that extends to IRAs.
  • @DanHardy
    Worry has an incorrect connotation for how I'm looking at retirement. Wonder is probably more accurate. Not only do I wonder what's going to happen, I find it some sort of "wonder" that I have this to consider at all. When the heck did this happen?

    I feel the same way. If I were 20 years old today; there is no way I would have the opportunity to accomplish financially and other ways what I have.
  • edited November 2016
    @VintageFreak The thing I don't understand is how people will say any sort of social programs--welfare, Food Stamps, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government subsidized education or job training and the increased taxation to fund those programs--are "communism" and therefore evil when in reality those programs were established in many countries to prevent communist or other kinds of violent revolution because of income inequality. Such statements lack any real historical sense. Things like FDR's New Deal and LBJ's War on Poverty were established during times of great social unrest and economic distress. There were literally food riots in the street and massive labor strikes during the Great Depression before FDR passed the New Deal. Roosevelt was a wealthy man from a wealthy family. I'm sure he had no desire for there to be a communist revolution, see his family killed and their wealth confiscated. His form of light socialist reforms are a far cry from a violent communist seizing of the means of production in which all the capitalist owners are purged.

    What happens when you have such great income disparities if people get really desperate during a severe economic downturn? Violence inevitably happens. It needn't be communist violence either. Violence of a fascist sort is more likely especially in a country like the U.S. and can easily exist in a capitalist society. When people get desperate in any culture they look for a common enemy to blame for it and a strong man who claims "only I can fix it" to lift them up. They willingly give up their liberties to that autocratic ruler for some bread. That's fascism in a nutshell. Immigrants and minorities are an easy target for the strong man autocrat to rally support during such periods, and already we've seen an uptick of white nationalism, hate crimes and hate speech not just here but throughout Europe. There was a similar anti-immigrant sentiment during the Great Depression. Perhaps the most disturbing thing in the U.S. today is there are so many guns, more than 300 million last time I checked. So the potential for extreme violence is very real.

    Free market ideologues and libertarians will argue that if we just got rid of all the social programs, taxes and government impediments via regulation all of these problems would naturally work themselves out. But it took over twenty years for the stock market to recover from the crash in 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. And it took the New Deal and massive government spending to finance a war that eventually dug us out. The same ideologues believe the New Deal--but somehow not the War effort--somehow exacerbated the Great Depression, even though both were forms of government socialist spending and there is ample evidence that GDP growth recovered strongly after the New Deal passed and before we entered the war.bea.gov/national/Index.htm

    During a twenty year Depression-like era while we wait for the free market to "work its magic," a lot of very bad violence can and will happen if there isn't a social safety net. That sort of violence can hurt everyone, including the super rich if history is any guide. The middle class vanishes--in fact the vanishing middle class is a key ingredient to the widespread discontent--the poor then show up with pitchforks, the rich and demonized minorities are purged as an autocrat seizes power. And the poor are usually left off worse than when the violence started.


  • @LewisBranham. Yup. I simply call it degeneration of society. We now have a new education secretary who is going to defund public schools at the expense of for profit charter schools. I'm a product of the public school system in America. The public schools are bad because those in charge are bad, and what we are doing is punishing the children who have no choice but to go to those schools.

    Some things do NOT improve when the motive is profit. That is just a fact. This is a bipartisan problem. All those people in government who approved school loans to all the U. of Phoenix s' and ITT Tech s' - wonder where their kids go.

    For that matter Congress should have Obamacare. If it's good for the rest of us, it should be good for them. ONLY then will there be no debate as to whether something is good or not. If it's good for all then it really needs to be consumed by all. If it isn't then it isn't.

    My parents were born in another country. I am reaped the benefits of them having moved here. I wonder if I'm going to have to prepare my kids to have to move somewhere else. Or maybe I can still convince them to become mutual fund managers. My morals are all screwed up, why mess up my children's minds? To succeed it's best morality and legality is messed up in one's brain. Too late for me, maybe not for them.
  • A big contributor to the income inequality is the expansion of "free trade" which is promoted by shill publications for the elites such as Barrons. -- The import/export model promoted by the "Free Trade Uber Alles" crowd has created gutted the American Middle Class. The jobs moved to China which has no political freedom -- so labor/social movements for any type of social contract to wrest power from the well-connected elites there has no hope (remember Tiananmen Square).

    Change the import/export model to one which requires direct investment in order to sell in those markets, and labor will again share in a growing economy, and the income inequality will reverse. (Of course, the elites of both parties like income inequality, as the poorer the masses are, the richer the elites are, on a relative basis).

  • For that matter Congress should have Obamacare. If it's good for the rest of us, it should be good for them. ONLY then will there be no debate as to whether something is good or not. If it's good for all then it really needs to be consumed by all. If it isn't then it isn't.

    The idea that Congress (and its staff) don't participate in Obamacare is one of those myths that one has to keep beating back with a stick. Here's an old (2013) list from the Washington Post showing where each member of Congress and each staff gets health coverage. The vast majority get coverage through the DC exchange, some from their home state exchange, Medicare, spouse's plan. A very few buy private insurance (FWIW, the only D on the list is DiFi, the rest are R's).
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/politics/which-senators-and-representatives-have-signed-up-for-obamacare/646/

    This myth may have originated, curiously enough, from VF's phrasing of the issue. Who exactly are "the rest of us"? According to KFF, if one excludes those on Medicare or Medicaid, or those uninsured, 7/8 of "the rest of us" get coverage through our employers: 49% of the total population is employer-covered, 7% has individual (non-group) coverage, the rest is primarily Medicare/Medicaid (the KFF link screens these out).

    Nearly all (non-Medicare/Medicaid) insurance comes through work, and only small employers are allowed to provide insurance from exchanges. So if we want Congress members to get insurance the way most of us do - working for small companies that offer exchange plans - we have to treat Congress' employer (the Federal government) as a small company.

    Done. An exemption was added to the ACA to treat Congress members as small company employees and get covered through the small business exchange (SHOP).

    From such exemptions, myths are created.
  • Hopefully we can all get together like the indians and the pilgrims did on Thanksgiving and count our blessings.

    Happy Thanksgiving to all
  • LB, gobble gobble to you for all your good work. Talking with some here is fruitless, and all you get is the same old lame old, gravied in ignorance.
  • JohnChisum : John's comment ...get together like the indians and the pilgrims did on Thanksgiving and count our blessings. made me remember and smile about the things we saw in our grammar school history books as children and the unshaken beliefs we still hang onto today. History is almost always the good old days. Makes me think of the latest campaign phrase, "make America great again" - but from who's perspective.

    Here is an interesting account of the Indian's side of history:

    http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/11/23/what-really-happened-first-thanksgiving-wampanoag-side-tale-and-whats-done-today-145807
  • @David Hey thanks, that's very nice of you to say. To me it's of vital importance that these social programs are at least maintained and hopefully expanded to address these inequality issues. Even if we could live in an isolationist "self sufficient" world as the white nationalists on the right are positing--which seems impossible given that the globalization genie is out of the bottle--that wouldn't solve the problem that technology now poses to the labor force. One study I read about from Oxford University estimates that nearly half of U.S. jobs could be lost to technology in the next twenty years:
    nybooks.com/articles/2015/04/02/how-robots-algorithms-are-taking-over/
    I don't think the U.S. can grow fast enough to replace those lost jobs and even if it could there would be dramatic environmental consequences from that growth.
    Obama himself has spoken recently with the New Yorker about these issues after the election. While he initially proposes the usual Democratic line about education being the solution to these problems, he admits it is only a temporary one and that the technology problem will not be solved with any model we currently have. From the article:

    Trump had triumphed in rural America by appealing to a ferment of anti-urban, anti-coastal feeling. And yet Obama dismissed the notion that the Republicans had captured the issue of inequality. “The Republicans don’t care about that issue,” he said. “There’s no pretense that anything that they’re putting forward, any congressional proposals that are going to come forward, will reduce inequality. . . . What I do concern myself with, and the Democratic Party is going to have to concern itself with, is the fact that the confluence of globalization and technology is making the gap between rich and poor, the mismatch in power between capital and labor, greater all the time. And that’s true globally.

    “The prescription that some offer, which is stop trade, reduce global integration, I don’t think is going to work,” he went on. “If that’s not going to work, then we’re going to have to redesign the social compact in some fairly fundamental ways over the next twenty years. And I know how to build a bridge to that new social compact. It begins with all the things we’ve talked about in the past—early-childhood education, continuous learning, job training, a basic social safety net, expanding the earned-income tax credit, investments in infrastructure—which, by definition, aren’t shipped overseas. All of those things accelerate growth, give you more of a runway. But at some point, when the problem is not just Uber but driverless Uber, when radiologists are losing their jobs to A.I., then we’re going to have to figure out how do we maintain a cohesive society and a cohesive democracy in which productivity and wealth generation are not automatically linked to how many hours you put in, where the links between production and distribution are broken, in some sense. Because I can sit in my office, do a bunch of stuff, send it out over the Internet, and suddenly I just made a couple of million bucks, and the person who’s looking after my kid while I’m doing that has no leverage to get paid more than ten bucks an hour.”
    newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/obama-reckons-with-a-trump-presidency
  • edited November 2016
    Not to worry about Trump ...

    He's not going to do all that stuff he said to get elected. No prosecuting Hillary. Romney (the "loser") is now a candidate for Sec. of State. The "wall" will be a fence in places. And some General has convinced him that water boarding isn't effective ... etc. etc.

    I live in a heavily pro-Trump area. I'm not close to any of those folks but do know several who voted 3rd party or stayed home. The best answer any can give me is: "Hillary's a crook."

    Disclaimer: Most of the above is sarcasism.
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