Are you in the global 1%? The website Global Rich List (which bases its estimates on World Bank data from 2008) suggests that earning over €28,000 euros a year is enough to get you admitted to the 1% club in terms of income. That’s not far from the average salary in many European countries.
Of course, it’s debatable how rigorous Global Rich Lists’s methodology is. They aim to provoke debate, not to provide definitive data. Different approaches give different thresholds for global 1% membership. For example, according to two academics from King’s College London, if you earn $50,000 (in 2012 prices, which was roughly €40,000 at the time) you would be part of the 1% global elite.
Measuring membership of the global 1% by income is likely misleading. A more accurate barometer is probably measuring wealth and assets. Even then, if you own your own house (and have paid off all your debts), you probably at least belong to one of the top 10% wealthiest households. The 2018 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute defines wealth as “the value of financial assets plus real assets (principally housing) owned by households, minus their debts”. By that metric, anybody with assets of roughly €82,000 is one of the 10% of richest people alive.
The point is that many Europeans might be surprised how wealthy they are in global terms. Within their own country, they are obviously unlikely to be in the top 1% of income earners. However, relative to the wages earned by an Indonesian labourer, for example, they are extremely privileged. Likewise, many European pensioners who own their own house will be among the richest 10% of people on the planet (even if in terms of income they are nowhere near that threshold).
The way we measure inequality is important. The recent report from Oxfam on global inequality, for example, has gone viral on social media (as it does every year). While the global 1% (actually probably the global 0.1%) have been hobnobbing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Oxfam reported that 26 people own the same amount, in terms of wealth and assets, as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity. That statistic is probably not entirely true, though, as inequality is much more complicated.
It’s undeniable that global poverty is a serious problem. However, the President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, recently reported that: “Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history”. It’s hard to square that with Oxfam’s statement that the world’s poorest are getting “even poorer”.
How can we cut global inequality? Are you in the global 1% in terms of income? Or the global 10% in terms of wealth? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below and we’ll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!
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No takers? “How can “WE” cut global inequality?”
What a far fetched & Utopian question to ask “us” & not “them”!
“We”, who comment here are:
* powerless
* undefined
* unequal
* unlucky
* and therefore cannot cut global inequality!
Headlines & statistics ………….and ordinary citizens are left to wonder, maybe getting angry, but can do little to nothing!
But- please distinguish between “earnings”, “total net wealth” & “control” ………and try to catch up!
“The world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030”
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp
For those who are really interested can read this cnbc.com report:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-part-of-the-1-percent-worldwide.html
……….and the “2018 Global Wealth Report” from Credit Suisse:
http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=77A4E912-A32D-8E84-CC8C21144CEE52E2
After digesting all this info, have a cup of coffee, be glad you were born where you were born, be happy & grateful to be healthy, alive and living where law & order still prevails!
Implement socialism so we can all be equally hungry.
World wide Communism, easy
Support democracy, build welfare systems, respect human rights. Easy, isn’t it?🤔😏😕
Why should we seek equality…..I don’t want to be equal, I want to be better.
Yeh people without a.house want to be better aswel. Not.everyone has to be equal but.everyone.has to be equal enough to survive
Some people want to be more equal than others.
Pareto distribution
I’d say, we should worry about first things first. Don’t you think?
About what exactly?. The most important issues should be 1 the fact that people are still dying on the street and 2 climate change.
which are both alleviated by optimizing economic systems.
aka overthrowing capitalism
how? working obviously!!
Only with ” out of the box ” local solutions, obviously the same recipe doesn’t works for every one
Overthrow the capitalist state
You can’t
Eat the rich.
But no seriously though, universal basic income and fair trade with less industrialized countries
More leftist BS.
Simply not possible! That’s like saying everyone will never again get cancer or have any allergies. There is no such thing as equality if there was, we would all be inventors and geniuses, we could all be Michelangelo. We are not all the same and that maybe bitter sweet but it’s a simple fact. Punishing those who have studied and worked,their butts off do not owe anyone who prefers to live on benefits, nor those who have large unaffordable families. Whoever feels this,way should live the experience of sharing all they have with anyone who has less for whatever reason. How many times must we watch communism fail?
That’s not how equality works. Equality means that everybody should be able to have the same possibilities of other people. You, me, your neighbor should have for example, the possibility to study or to live a decent life. It’s not a fault being born in a poor family jfc
nobody said it was but we don’t all think exactly the same. Some poor people have become millionaires because they tackle the problem differently. Victimhood helps nobody. Equality in schooling gets worse every year as our children are dumbed down and passes get easier.
Abolishing world government and multinational corporations
I suggest we nuke the world. That way everybody is equally dead.
The ideas are already out there, it’s time to get serious with the actual implementation. Top marginal tax rate of 62% for incomes above 500,000 EUR + additional 5% tax for every additional million earned; wealth tax for assets above 1 million EUR; billionaire’s tax for income and assets; financial transactions tax; progressive corporate tax (minimum EU wide rate to be established): 60% tax for profits above 100 million EUR; special tax for exploitation of oil & gas (like in Norway). Then reducing or eliminating any co-pays and deductibles for health insurance with a compulsory public option. Stop supporting regime-changing interventionist wars that cause havoc & poverty, and bring huge profits to the military industrial complex. Tuition-free (or small co-pays) for everyone to ensure equal access to post-secondary education. Etc. etc. etc.
End capitalism. It’s a system rooted in growing inequality.
Cutting funding to useless NGO’s would be a good step.
Take the billions away from the few guys manipulating the masses and the media and funding NGO’s to indoctrinate people and make (riots militias)
Poland and Hungary have some of the lowest Gini Index in the EU and they are run by right-wing politicians. Income inequality can be opposed by both left-wing and right-wing ideologies.
How many failed states must there be before people realize that socialism/communism is a destroyer of wealth, progress, and prosperity?
Socialists don’t really care. They are evil
but it was not real socialism/communism!!
(Aka .. it didn’t killed enough people!)
COMMUNISM.
The society should take steps towards a better tuned taxation system. Ending or reducing the tax paradises should create resources to limitate the inequality. Taxing the big wealths
Sounds like communism which failed 100 times
Why communist to ask that everyone is taxed at the same level? If I pay tax for my income and my property, the same should happen with the rich ones. Allowing them to hide their incomes in fiscal paradises is unfair and should be considered a criminal action.
its impossible to tax rich cuz there wealth comes from other sources then regular hard working people. Like stocks, funds, corporations which have many benefist for investors. So they never pay and they own the nedia, shadow government they own everything.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Development aid for Africa has, for the latter half of the 20th century, been based entirely on tired, self-important anti-colonial discourses holding that colonialism is solely to blame for African problems. Exactly like the 19th century colonialists, the new “good guy” racists believed Africans are like children and cannot be expected to be responsible for themselves and anything that happens in Africa, good or bad, is ultimately the doing of Europeans. Because, regardless of how much they insisted they were different than their colonialist grandparents, they were not. They still believed themselves to be essentially superior. Asia, meanwhile, were treated as grown adults on an equal footing who simply needed to do better for themselves. The result is our modern world.
Ideally I think we must acknowledge that in any society most people are mediocre, and a few are geniuses. Post-enlightenment European societies have developed a ‘genius metabolism’. Using a series of structures based in rule of law, patents, copyrights and legal personhood, these societies metabolize genius and convert it into society-wide benefits. Societies, meanwhile, are stable and generally pleasant places to live. People are thus incentivized to aspire to genius because they expect to be rewarded for success, and they are encouraged to remain in their societies once they do succeed and continue contributing because they do not expect that their renown and success will anger the authorities or cause an envious society to turn against them. All of these are legal and cultural elements of successful societies.
By contrast in many developing countries there is no effective rule of law. The law is arbitrary, you may be expropriated or imprisoned at any moment for stepping on the wrong toes, institutions do not work, people are superstitious and envious, they are dangerous places to live even at the best of times. Geniuses leave for more stable countries and their ideas are not metabolized by their own societies, and so do not enrich them. It’s a vicious cycle.
There are some positive signs. From the Spanish perspective, Equatorial Guinea – a former Spanish colony – recently found oil and has enjoyed an oil bonanza. Unlike Venezuela, however, Guineans seem to understand that the oil bonanza is only temporary, and is not and cannot be the basis of a wealthy society. Eventually it will run out – or oil may even be superseded by other sources of energy – and they cannot stake their future on endless oil wealth. Instead, they’ve been using the money to develop knowledge and spur industries with long-term prospects, sending students abroad to study. For example, via an accord, they are sending students to study agricultural sciences in the Dominican Republic, which has a similar climate. That is excellent and heartening. The country has been steadily improving its economy, even as oil prices have wildly fluctuated, exporting many bright young students to Spain, while in the same period Venezuela has become a synonym for mismanagement and total economic disaster, exporting millions of refugees instead.
That is the way to go, not sending a bunch of Western students to build wells in poor countries so they can upload selfies of themselves surrounded by smiling locals and get a thousand pats on the back. You need to create a generation of people who are educated and capable of running a modern country. Patience, dedication, determination, and a commitment to progress and knowledge.
We can fund and support projects for sustainable development in less wealthy countries.
agreed, but you also need to educate the people in those countries to manage their income properly.
their problem is, there is no income! But yes, education has to be part of the process.
no, actually there is some income, not as high or as regular as in developed countries, but not as bad as it’s made out to be either
Every human is disappointed with something in his/her life. Everyone lacks something. If somebody wants to have something, they must do something about it. Buy it, deserve it, create it, whatever it takes without braking the law. If those “inequals” don’t like the position they are in, they could do the same thing as “equals” did for becoming successful. Make it. Thinking that satisfied people are having something that belongs to unsatisfied is a way for losers.
That would be fine if the starting point was the same. It is not.
so what? This is a job, job isn’t fun.
I guess it’s fun for you. Don’t care about others.
This is what I sometimes hear from the people who don’t want to solve their problems but rather look for reasons not to do it. Actually I was born in a country with Lenin’s portraits in every building. People of my nationality suffered from various restrictions. My early childhood is three or four different currencies, 2 or 3 hyperinflations, in one month people could earn as much as your parents probably were spending in the shop. It lasted for about 10 years. Then my youth was politicians disappearing, country stepping back to authoritarism and me understanding of not having any perspective if I don’t take care of it right now, and change my life radically. Whatever it takes: to leave for a better place, to study a language, to change profession, to develop new skills, anything what it takes. I did it. It wasn’t fun, it was difficult indeed. But difficult is not a reason not to do it. It was not a fault of someone from US or UK that my start was like that. It was not in my power to choose the start. But it was up to me to make what goes next. If something is “too difficult” for you, then not having it is exactly what you need.
Nah bruh better be a leech to system and claim to be oppressed because you were born poorer than others!
..so what?
You were born poor?
Do better than your parents!Work hard and create a better life for your children.
And stop whining!
The elites became elites through time. They were not always the elites and one day they might won’t be.
You are can’t choose your starting position but you are can choose how to influence your future.
Choose wisely.
People of this thinking usually percept their problems not as a result of some wrong choices/actions that they took but rather as a bad luck. Following this logic they see “elites” not as people who achieved what they have but rather as people who’s luck was better. Luck isn’t something that a person can influence, so they see it as injustice that they have less than someone else has. That’s usually their point. They don’t understand what can be done to really change things, so they think that probably nothing can be done and these “elites” didn’t really do anything to deserve it, maybe stolen or smth like that. Earlier most of people knew that if they don’t understand something it doesn’t really mean that there is no such thing. Today despite of all benifits of modern life we have one problem: every illiterate person thinks his/her opinion is the same valuable as expet’s opinion and then goes to voting booth.
couldn’t agree more. I think a lot is misguided compassion. But the line between loving mother and tyrannical mother is very thin.
Is good for a society to help people achieve their potential because it can generate more wealth for the society itself.
But pretending that people who are more successful did not earned their better position is foolish.
If you can’t strife towards a better life for you or your children you will never do anything good and you will start creating trouble just to fight boredom.
Is very easy to pass as “good person” by devoting oneself to an external bigger-than-thou rather than dealing with your own problem.
Freedom is achieve through discipline. Meaning is achieved through adoption of responsibility.
Sacrifice is the key to a better future.
How can you master a city if you can’t master yourself?
that’s the very definition of populism. Simple answers for complex problems.
Sharing more knowledge and more tools to acumulate knowledge on your own.
You can’t.
Inequality is necessary for society to thrive. You can try to reduce it a bit to keep society stable.
We should help deserving people develop their potential but smarter, more hardworking and disciplined people will always be richer.
People who won’t pull their weight deserve no compassion.