Is the fact that .25% of the people in the world control the majority of the wealth in the world a problem? If it is a problem, how would it be rectified?
According to a report by Knight Frank, there are 172,850 ultra-high net worth individuals across the world, along with 1,822 billionaires, 38,280 centa-millionaires and 17,808,831 millionaires. For more information on the depressing reality of worldwide wealth distribution, refer to Statista’s latest feature in the Independent.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Throughout history there are two basic ways for wealth to become equalized:
1. significant losses through dumb investments and bankruptcy
2. revolution
Since the PTB have eliminated #1 via government bailouts, central bank extraordinary policy actions, bail-ins of common account holders, etc. they better watch out or they are going to have one massive #2 on their hands. (pun intended.)
potlatch?
It only becomes a problem if a bunch of lawyers grab Koch Industries and decide they know how to run a business. Or nationalize banks so they can give away depositors money to their friends.
I think this where we are headed. And most of the dumb public would agree temporarily. Until, they find out it’s too late to go back.
They can’t take it with them, they can leave it to their pets or a member of the lucky sperm club. Riches without purpose lead to dissolution. Eventually the rich spend themselves out with drugs and sex.
Funny. I doubt most people in the lower part of the green pyramid feel all that wealthy.
All I know is that HNWI’s (those with $1m or more in stuff that can be turned into cash without selling the house) numbered (according to Wikip. and Huffpo) about 5 million in 2011, so I figure they’re about 2% of the US population today.
I can tell you this: At least one out of every 5 cars that passes me on the highway cost more than what I’m driving, and my house is tiny compared to everything built in the last 20 years.
People LIVE like they’re rich. I suspect most of them are NOT.
@El, you are right, but neglect the following.
They will burn out AFTER our corpses have littered the earth. The uber rich are like cockroaches, they survive everything even the end of the world as we know it.
Off shoring and importing labor for wage arbitrage are the two primary drivers of this “trend.”
I know, I know, nobody wants to believe it, which is why it isn’t going to change until after it is far too late.
TE & El,
I commend to your consideration Orwell’s “book within a book” The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emanuel Goldstein (found as part of Nineteen Eighty-Four.)
From a wiki on the “book.”
Ignorance is Strength details the perpetual class struggle characteristic of human societies;[3] beginning with the historical observation that societies always have hierarchically divided themselves into social classes and castes: the High (who rule); the Middle (who work for, and yearn to supplant the High), and the Low (whose goal is quotidian survival). Cyclically, the Middle deposed the High, by enlisting the Low. Upon assuming power, however, the Middle (the new High class) recast the Low into their usual servitude. In the event, the classes perpetually repeat the cycle, when the Middle class speaks to the Low class of “justice” and of “human brotherhood” in aid of becoming the High class rulers.
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Bottom Line: There has always been a “High.” There always will be a “High.” Any narrative that denies this is a lie, and therefore must be examined for “cui bono.” Invariably you’ll discover that every revolutionary movement is either astroturf, co-opted or an entrapment.
Look at the American Revolution; it was almost entirely undone by those “wonderful” “Founders” in Philadelphia who drafted the current morass we call the Constitution of 1787. The High always co-opt even seemingly successful revolutions.
This state of affairs will exist as long as most people prefer slavery to liberty, and as long as self-promotion of sociopaths is a path to power (and it is and always has been.)
dc sunsets said:
“I can tell you this: At least one out of every 5 cars that passes me on the highway cost more than what I’m driving, and my house is tiny compared to everything built in the last 20 years.”
My 29 year old POS daily driver cost me $1500 fifteen years ago so I’d guess that 98% of cars passing me in any given month cost more than mine. My hovel is only 1032 sq. ft. It qualifies as a garage for many of the houses I’ve built over the last 20 years.
Meant to say “helped build”. (concrete)
Come on, IS, your hovel is larger than the 900 sq ft homes in the SF Bay area that have an average sale price of $655,000 now.
I live like a king in my 1600 sq ft home in fly-over country. And don’t hate me because I bought a new car in 2012…the first one I’d bought new since 1987.
Someone has to keep the Toyota factory open in GA (or wherever Camry’s are made.)
When my hovel was first built it was about 600 sq. ft. Some hillbilly added an addition and then later a large closet sized room binging it to 1032. I keep telling my wife we should rent out the house and live in the shed.
dc.sunsets says: Bottom Line: There has always been a “High.” There always will be a “High.”
Orwell illustrates this with the pigs, lowborn creatures who sell out the revolution and start acting like the humans in greed and ambition.