[font="]Some things puzzle me. I can walk down a busy street in new York city and buy watches clocks and it intrigues me how does anybody make any money when you sell things like clocks for a buck. Yet there are piles of money out there. Enough to make bombs and wars . [/font]
I read on a website somewhere that 95% of the worlds money is controlled by only 5% of the population. Don't know if those numbers are totally accurate but it makes a point. That 5% are above govt on the food chain. As a matter of fact they control govt in many ways that the public mostly don't know about. That's why there's tons of money for bombs and war. They'll do anything to further their power and pockets. To actually find out about how that works might be one hell of a jacobs ladder because they protect it very well.
So according to your numbers thats 32 million people. I bet that even here there are those who earn 1 to 10 million that make up the bulk of the number. And then a small fraction that get most of that 95 % of th fat of the earth, What do you think?
It also said 50% of all the money is controlled by only 1% so that would make sense, if those #'s are correct.
I don't have any statistics for the world as a whole, but in the United States the wealth disparity is not as high as some of you seem to believe. The wealthiest 10% of Americans control only 30.5% of the wealth, while the poorest 10% control 1.8% (CIA World Factbook). I'm not passing any judgment as to whether that distribution is "fair" or not (although I've done so in a few other threads). But those are the statistics for the United States.
I was just thinking, partly spurred by this thread, anway, would anyone really want to have the wealth evenly spread? I mean, the per capita GDP of the U.S. is roughly $36,000, and the U.S. is tied for second highest per capita GDP. The U.S. also has a population of ~300 million, the world population is several billion. All I'm saying is even without taking into account the rest of the world, even distribution of wealth isolated in the U.S. leaves every person with what I would not even consider enough to live comfortably. Factor in the rest of the world, and 'fair' distribution of wealth would leave us all rather poor it would seem. Of course I am not sure though, but that is how it seems to me.
I think the big disparities exist every where. In every nation there is a group of people who just get away with an unfair share. Sometimes that group is made up of nationals from that country sometimes they are part of the world class of very rich. Then you go to a country like Guatemala and notice that a radio or television in that country is worth 30 to 50 % more. In a country where the people make less than 2 dollars a day and it makes me wonder. If this is not challenged then the alienation will un doubltly create hatred and alienation more and more. There are things we can do. As a society that deserves to be called civilized. Free trade should go hand in hand with fair trade. I would even advance the concept of a maximum wage that is high enough to given entrepreneurship and excellence room to be a powerful motors of development yet make it so that the obscene examples of the mega multi-millionaires are gone. We don’t need those sickeningly rich pricks. They are not the cause of our worlds prosperity it is human creativity and determination that is responsible for that. So we don’t have to send all our cars and wealth to the third world country’s we just make it so that if they work hard they get a chance to buy back some of their stuff. Get those mega fortunes world wide and invest that into the world either with sustainable economic ventures involving potentially great stuff like solar panels. That’s right get the poorer country’s set up to make things for the environment and other good ideas. Any way that is how I see things Papillon
You are correct. The world GDP per capita is about $8,000. Americans can earn more than that working fulltime at McDonald's.
While I don't have time right now for a lengthy post there are a few things that need to be said. First, income disparity in the US is getting worse. Things are headed in the wrong direction. It doesn't bode well. Second there is a moral issue. Again while I don't have the time to go into it now the fact is if you sat down and thought about it long and hard you would come to the conclusion that morally speaking one person does not deserve any more than any other except insofar as there are different needs. From a moral perspective there needs to be greater equalization of assets not only within the US but around the world. Third even neglecting the moral dimension assets and efforts are used toward ends that out of practical considerations they shouldn't be and and all sorts of reorganization needs to take place. As one example, money that people use to buy SUVs should instead be used to work toward renewable energy and energy independence. No matter what kind of political system you have nothing is ever perfect and reassessments and reajustments of what areas need attention constantly have to be made. I would say that the staus quo is very far from optimal. I once heard that the net worth Bill Gates -- that of one individual -- is more than the combined assets of I don't know I think it was the poorest 30 million Americans or something like that.
The combined worth of U.S. billionaires has topped a trillion dollars. That's worth 50 million people making $20K a year. You can't really divide the world wealth per capita evenly to get a fair playing field. What $8000 per person means depends on the context the person is living in. For a third world person, it would be like being a millionaire. For a consumptive American with an oversize house, guzzling SUV, lots of material possessions, and a thermostat comfort level of 79F, it's like being a pauper. The problem is that some people in the world are in abject poverty, whereas others have all sorts of material possessions and money they don't really need.
Yup, but there is more to it then that, here is a quote from Ivan Illich: Celebration of Awareness -1971 That was 1971 when Ivan Illich wrote that and we still have the same problem today.
Here's one: The top 1% of american earners gets more than the bottom 100,000 people's salaries put together.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/23/news/newsmakers/forbes_400/index.htm?cnn=yes "For the first time since 2000, the magazine said, "the combined net worth of the nation's wealthiest climbed to $1 trillion, up $45 billion in 12 months." A record number of billionaires--313--was instrumental in reaching the trillion-dollar mark."
Maybe, but it would require really looking at the numbers to know. Either way, if that were true, that just tells us how really fucking bad off today's poor must be, if one is saying that if wealth were evenly distributed we'd all be poor. It also goes to show that for all our industrialization and much touted "progress" we've really degressed. The hunter-gatherer tribes long ago lived way better than the average human today.
Strange, I read the other day that 60% of the wealth in the US is controlled by 5% of the population. It's possible that was for the world, but I swear it was for the US.... hmm...
People lived in North America for thousands of years and didn't rape the land. It was all still beautiful when Europeans arrived.
Nope, they actually had a higher standard of living, as do modern day "primitives" like the San (Bushmen) of southern Africa. They work far less and have lots of leisure time than our "advanced" societies. They also have little or no poverty or power differences among themselves (communal living equals it out). They also, amazingly, tend to have better health than the civilized people, with less infectious disease and better teeth, not to mention the near lack of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc etc...which are a result of our poor, limited diets based mostly on carbohydrates and No, I don't see it as an ideal situation (infant mortality is a major drawback worth mentioning) but in general, it was not a bad life...not the "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" lives we tend to think of it as.
