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'Global Oligarchy' Reigns as Top 1% Controls More Wealth Than Bottom 95% of Humanity
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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FYI (and I expect to be downvoted because y'all don't want to hear this), but when an article talks about the "global 1%" it's probably talking about YOU.
Yes, you. And me. And probably most of the people reading this, who live in the US or another Western country and consider themselves "middle class." WE are the global 1%.
From https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich :
Also, if you prefer to measure by wealth instead of income, that's lower than you think, too. I'm having trouble finding a more recent figure, but as of 2018, the threshold to be considered global 1% in terms of net worth was only $871,320. No, didn't typo: it really is only hundreds of thousands, not millions or billions.
(The billionaires are more like the 0.01%.)
But what's your point? Are people making $60k/year causing world hunger through artificial scarcity or is it the greed and mental illness of the capitalist class?
The math doesn't even math though. It's 80 million people, globally. Are we to believe no other country contributes to this number? The entire rest of the "Western world" doesn't contribute at all?
That's not how purchasing power parity works. You compare the incomes with the same power, no matter what class they are in their regional economy.
Yeah, but there's still the issue that half the US fits that 60k metric and that's roughly 160 million people, or around 80 million working adults. So more than 1 percent of the global population right there. As I said above, the math doesn't math. This myth discounts the entirety of Europe and East Asia (China actually follows the US in number of high net worth people).
There's a way to talk about the difference in services and standards of living but spreading myths isn't it.