40% of world's wealth owned by 1% of population

The richest one per cent of the world's population owns 40 per cent of the total household wealth, while the bottom half of the world makes do with barely one per cent, according to a research report released Tuesday.

The study, which further underlined the continuing disparity between rich and poor, is by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research, part of the United Nations University.

It took more than $500,000 US to be among the richest one per cent of adults in the world, according to the report. The richest 10 per cent of adults needed $61,000 US in assets.

In contrast, 50 per cent of adults owned barely one per cent of the household wealth.

Source

The thing that is so hard to believe is that 50% of the world has 1% of the world's wealth... thats a jaw-dropping statistic. It's a statistic that should cause action.

Further down it says:

Average net worth in the United States amounted to $143,867 per person in 2000, while it reached $180,837 in Japan.

At the bottom end of the scale were Ethiopia with per-capita wealth of $193 and Congo at $180.

Africa, the world's most resource rich continent homes the countries with the lowest per-capita wealth.

Why are Europe and America so rich?
Because they robbed Africa and many other places around the world. "You need capital to start to win the capitalism", and without this much needed capital there is no forseeable way for half the world to increase its wealth.

There are schemes like microcredit underway, but it's about time we saw the 1% who own almost half the world's wealth doing more than trying to increase their wealth further.

I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

This is unsurprising to me and actually I feel it reflects the humanist nature of the world.

In business it is often the case that 80% of a companies profits comes from 20% of thier clients.

To relate that to the worlds economy, if 80% of the economy was owned by 20% of the worlds population we would see some serious issues with civil unrest.

There as one period in history that springs to mind, the French Revolution.

Anyway, the question is where do you draw the line? Redistribution of wealth is in essence the basic principle of Communism and we all know that communism leads to oppression.

Where is the middle ground??

A thoughtful thread byhiniur

NeoN HaZe.


[edit on 6-12-2006 by Neon Haze]

No surprise, but nobody wants a bad ethically wealthy men.

Men are living by food but today they want more than a food.

Must concern about this
'exponential growth of population VS arithmetic growth of foods'.

People would not care anymore about other and that I don't want to think about the future..

thelibra found similar statistics in another thread. I thought I’d post them here as they confirm the huge inequality between the rich and the poor. All these stats are from excellent sources also…

Originally posted by thelibra
"Today, the top 1 percent of Americans control 38 percent of the household wealth, and the top 20 percent control 83 percent" - Time

"One percent of the U.S. population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth." - Harper Business

"As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%" - UCSC

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks for the notification of similair information CN23, I'll read the thread soon.

Just came on after hearing about this:

The real price of cheap clothes: Bangladeshi sweatshop labourers paid just 3p an hour
By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent
Published: 08 December 2006

Bangladeshis making cheap clothes for Asda, Tesco and Primark are paid as little as 3p an hour, according to a report that claims to reveal the grim truth about Asia's sweatshops.

Basic pay in factories that cut and sew fabric for budget chains could be just £8 a month for an 80-hour week, investigation for the charity War on Want found.
Source

I'm working on an article regarding these claims and the issues they raise that I will hopefully post in a few days.

Hope it is more food for thought for people who hadn't heard about it and I would welcome all your views on this (what I would call) problem.

Sorry Ekkavit, could you or someone else expand.

Thanks in advance.

The reason Europe and the US are so wealthy is because of strong monetary constitutions - in Africa you can't own anything because the "warlord" or "emperor" will steal it from you.

It has nothing to do with colonialism which brought the natives thousands of years of technological achievement.

Freemaurer, I suggest you read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. Inside, the author claims (and then backs up) that the reason Europe and America outgrew the rest of the world is their proximity to natural resources, ample food supply and developed resistance to disease (ie. Black Plague).

These factors combines to give us the upper hand.

Originally posted by FreiMaurer It has nothing to do with colonialism which brought the natives thousands of years of technological achievement.

I’m sure the Native Americans who were dying from our disease and from our bullet wounds were yelling. “hooray! hooray! technology!!!”

Colonialism and neo- colonialism (IMF, WB) have everything to do with current inequalities. - Let’s not put our heads in the sand.

[edit on 26/1/07 by ConspiracyNut23]

Originally posted by ConspiracyNut23
Freemaurer, I suggest you read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. Inside, the author claims (and then backs up) that the reason Europe and America outgrew the rest of the world is their proximity to natural resources, ample food supply and developed resistance to disease (ie. Black Plague).

These factors combines to give us the upper hand.

Originally posted by FreiMaurer It has nothing to do with colonialism which brought the natives thousands of years of technological achievement.

I’m sure the Native Americans who were dying from our disease and from our bullet wounds were yelling. “hooray! hooray! technology!!!”

Colonialism and neo- colonialism (IMF, WB) have everything to do with current inequalities. - Let’s not put our heads in the sand.

[edit on 26/1/07 by ConspiracyNut23]

This is preposterous - Rome had all these things and NEVER surpassed China's Living standards, but rather collapsed under the weight of "barbarians".

Africa had all the access of Europe to plentiful food, metals and energy. So did China.

The reason is MONETARY CONSTITUTIONS.

In the wake of problems European nations did NOT go around destroying their countries like cancers sucking up all the available resources, rather people protected sometimes by force sometimes by law, their material wealth this kept their economies progressing and developing.

Meanwhile in Africa any small plague caused a massive war of survival that destroyed any sort of progress...

The only land truly devoid of the resources needed for industry was the Meso-Americans (who lacked base metals).

FreiMaurer, I don’t think I explained Diamonds’ theories adequately.
Please, check it out for yourself. (the wiki article offers an excellent synopsis of the book.)

And again regarding colonialism bringing “thousands of years of technological achievement. That is itself, preposterous. – It simply did not, it nearly wiped them out.

In the later context of the European colonization of the Americas, 95 percent of the indigenous populations are believed to have been killed off by diseases unwittingly brought by the Europeans.

en.wikipedia.org...

Western nations got rich in the last 500 years by plundering other nations, ie. India, Africa and South America by force. Military Conquests not with their “strong monetary institution.” (ie. Diamond's "Guns")


[edit on 29/1/07 by ConspiracyNut23]

you seem to be overlooking the industrial revolution and other leaps in technological development. Remember that around the 1800s the majority of industrialized nations were in europe or america. The standard of living shot up in the countries where this revolution took place and with it, the net earnings of its citizens.

Let me start by questioning the last statement of your original post. What makes you believe the richest people only have an interest in furthering their own wealth? Secondly, if they do have such an interest, what makes that interest any different from the rest of us.

Now I don't know exactly how Europe (Western Europe) became so wealthy, but in America that wealth came about by first exploiting the vast natural resources of the North American continent and second by exploiting the natural resources of any of the rest of the world that could be persuaded by one means or the other to let us have them. We took in raw resources and processed them into finished products that were in turn sold back to the supplying countries at enormous profits.

Why did we do that? Because we damn well could. Other countries could have done the same if they had had the drive and inventiveness of our forebearers--they did not, so yankee ingenuity won out.

As an aside, when I was stationed in the Philippines in the very early 70's, the average annual income for the entire country was $52 per person. A whopping $1 per week. Further, the top 2% of Philippinos controlled over 95% of the entire country's wealth. I remember thinking how ripe the country was for some sort of revolution.

Anyway, if you adopt some sort of standard measure concerning the control of wealth, and apply that measure to all the countries of the world, you see that--in the U.S. anyway--wealth is better distributed. I.e., more people are needed to control it. Of course that control is still mostly centered in the top 1% of the population, but when has it ever been otherwise, anywhere?

You know, what would really be interesting to know is how much of each countries wealth is controlled by outsiders and just where such outsiders live.

[edit on 29-1-2007 by Astronomer70]

I have one argument that represents my whole argument against Guns, Germs and Steel.

Farming as a need for Cities.

Why then Africa, a cornicopia did not have many great cities? Because property rights were almost non-existent in Africa even now.

In Europe property rights were well established, the feudal age over-ruled them and resulted in a few hundred years of tyranny that were over-thrown and rebelled against constantly giving birth to formalized constitutional protection of private property.

That's why African farming was never successful enough to support major cities, lack of property rights.