The global 1% has a net worth starting at $880,000USD.
That might seem like a lot of money, but it's less than you need just in your retirement account to retire in many places. A teacher, or an engineer, or even someone who just lucked out and bought a house in the right place in the 90s might have a net worth much higher than that.
That last point is particularly important, because maybe you have an 800,000 house but less than 100,000 in other assets? Guess what then? You can't even retire on that, ever. You're just a slightly well off wage slave.
"Just sell the house then!" oh, great. So then you'll have not enough money to retire on and also no house in the place you set down roots.
Your choice at the end of your life as part of the vaunted 1% may be you can sell out to Blackrock and live in a very luxurious cardboard box or you can slave away working for a Blackrock owned company so the city doesn't seize your property from you for lack of payment of taxes.
Even if you consider "The millionaires", that's a lot of money, but not that much money, especially if you lucked out and have a paid off house.
When we're talking about "Millionaires", usually we're considering what a millionaire used to be -- and that point is important. According to the bank of Canada (and the same really applies generally to the federal reserve), a million dollars today was only 77,000 in 1950. A million dollars in 1950 would be closer to 13 million today -- a number that's closer to being what we might consider "rich".
As for income rather than wealth, according to the charity website https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/, if you're single and have an after tax income of $75,000, you're in the global 1% of income earners. It's not a terrible income, but that's still a working stiff right there. You can make that kind of income without a degree or anything as long as you're willing to do something dirty and dangerous.
I think it helps show that when we're talking about "the elites", it isn't even one in a hundred people, it's a very small number of people who were both very lucky and very well connected.
It also helps to show a totally unintuitive fact about the global money system -- the fact that many people live perfectly fine lives on much less money. That isn't because you're a big fat rich loser and they're better people. It's because the cost of living is so high in "rich" countries that you just need that much money to have the same general quality of life as in other regions. A lot of immigrants are coming now to our "rich" countries and realizing it's actually really expensive and then just moving right back because it turns out the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence after all.
All of this is to say that we need to be careful about how we slice the rich and poor, and how we judge people based solely on being just past some arbitrary round number, be it 1% or 1 million dollar net worth. You can make some big mistaken assumptions if you do.
That might seem like a lot of money, but it's less than you need just in your retirement account to retire in many places. A teacher, or an engineer, or even someone who just lucked out and bought a house in the right place in the 90s might have a net worth much higher than that.
That last point is particularly important, because maybe you have an 800,000 house but less than 100,000 in other assets? Guess what then? You can't even retire on that, ever. You're just a slightly well off wage slave.
"Just sell the house then!" oh, great. So then you'll have not enough money to retire on and also no house in the place you set down roots.
Your choice at the end of your life as part of the vaunted 1% may be you can sell out to Blackrock and live in a very luxurious cardboard box or you can slave away working for a Blackrock owned company so the city doesn't seize your property from you for lack of payment of taxes.
Even if you consider "The millionaires", that's a lot of money, but not that much money, especially if you lucked out and have a paid off house.
When we're talking about "Millionaires", usually we're considering what a millionaire used to be -- and that point is important. According to the bank of Canada (and the same really applies generally to the federal reserve), a million dollars today was only 77,000 in 1950. A million dollars in 1950 would be closer to 13 million today -- a number that's closer to being what we might consider "rich".
As for income rather than wealth, according to the charity website https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/, if you're single and have an after tax income of $75,000, you're in the global 1% of income earners. It's not a terrible income, but that's still a working stiff right there. You can make that kind of income without a degree or anything as long as you're willing to do something dirty and dangerous.
I think it helps show that when we're talking about "the elites", it isn't even one in a hundred people, it's a very small number of people who were both very lucky and very well connected.
It also helps to show a totally unintuitive fact about the global money system -- the fact that many people live perfectly fine lives on much less money. That isn't because you're a big fat rich loser and they're better people. It's because the cost of living is so high in "rich" countries that you just need that much money to have the same general quality of life as in other regions. A lot of immigrants are coming now to our "rich" countries and realizing it's actually really expensive and then just moving right back because it turns out the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence after all.
All of this is to say that we need to be careful about how we slice the rich and poor, and how we judge people based solely on being just past some arbitrary round number, be it 1% or 1 million dollar net worth. You can make some big mistaken assumptions if you do.
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