5 ms·

You'd need to adjust the numbers by inflation to make a fair comparison though.

loumf 11y ago
$770,988,654.35 / http://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=350000000&cinyear1=1986&coutyear1=2015&calctype=1&x=92&y=15 http://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartin...
unreal37 11y ago
$300 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollars. Still seems like the rate of wealth of the richest 100 has exceeded inflation by 8X... Which is fine, just interesting.
- oneJob 11y ago
  Your instincts are correct: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/plutocrats-rise-new-global-super-rich-review http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/plutocrats-rise... "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich by Chrystia Freeland – review A necessary and at times depressing book about the staggeringly wealthy"
- pyrrhotech 11y ago
  I wouldn't say it's "fine". The well-documented increasing wealth-inequality is going to be a major problem to solve in the next century. As automation becomes more prevalent, it will only get worse with the money ultimately going to fewer and fewer hands.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    It seems like the relevant problems to solve are 1) how to provide enough support to all people so that the "floor" isn't so low as to be despairing and 2) how to help people to be mindful that sometimes, you will not be on top of the pile, and that's OK. Inequality itself is a function of the uncounted dimensions of comparison amongst humans. Wealth is just a proxy target for this underlying fact. Make wealth equal by the most gentle mechanisms imaginable and the dynamics will just shift to some other dimension. It's like whack-a-mole with abstract concepts we barely understand baked into our monkey brains.
  - ergothus 11y ago
    One quote I saw somewhere said something like "if inequality grows too extreme, you will have the choice of redistributing wealth through taxation, or redistributing poverty through revolution". I had never thought of poverty as something one could distribute, so that quote has stuck with me.
dragonwriter 11y ago
$350 million (the amount referenced in the article) in 1986 dollars is $760 million in 2015 dollars. [0] Still quite a bit less than $5 billion. [0] http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=1986&year2=2015 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=19...
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Wealth disparity is a lot worse now than it was in 1986. So you have to take that into account also.
  - adpirz 11y ago
    I think that's exactly what that shows. Real median income (2014 dollars) was 51,000 in 1986. Today, it's 53,000[0]. Wealth in the middle hasn't changed much, and all that GDP growth is being gobbled by the very top. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N
    - mhays 11y ago
      I think that's the joke.
    - bpodgursky 11y ago
      Or you know... Bill Gates et al created a segment of the economy that didn't exist. Inflammatory language like "gobbled up" really annoys me. It's not like all that Microsoft stock would be evenly distributed among the middle class if he had never come along.
      - ryandrake 11y ago
        OK, so entrepreneurs "grow the pie" while gobbling up most of the newly created pie.
        11y ago
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Even that's not right, you need to compare to per capita GDP. $350 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollar, but per capita GDP was just $19.1k in 1986. So $750 million corresponded to 39.2k times the per capita GDP. Today per capita GDP is $54.6k, so $5 billion is 91.5k times that. Which means that the degree to which the 100th richest person is richer than the average is about 2.3x more than it was 30 years ago.
- baudehlo 11y ago
  Why does GDP matter if you're calculating individual wealth and thus purchasing power? (Genuine question btw - not disagreeing just interested)
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    It's a comparison of how relatively rich people are. Adjusting for inflation ignores economic growth.
    - baudehlo 11y ago
      Still confused (I got a D in economics so help me out). Can you elaborate more?
      - InclinedPlane 11y ago
        Taking inflation into account offsets the fact that dollars in 1986 didn't have the same value as dollars today. That allows you to compare, roughly, how rich different people are in different years. So you can compare the 100th richest person in the US in 1986 to the 100th richest person in the US today in terms of what they could buy. But the interesting thing, which is how this whole sub-thread started, is asking whether or not the rich are getting much richer even beyond economic growth. So the 100th richest person in the US is richer today than the 100th richest person from 1986, but overall, on average, people in the US are richer today than folks were in 1986, so that direct comparison tells you little. So how do you account for that? The easiest way is to just compare to GDP, but you need to account for the population difference, so you can just use per capita GDP. Basically you're asking: how much is this amount of wealth relative to the average single person slice of the "economic pie" in a given year. In 1986 that figure was roughly forty thousand "pie slices" for the 100th richest person, today that figure is ninety thousand "pie slices".
cpubreak 11y ago
You'd need to restrain from making a comment about adjusting the numbers when you can do it yourself instead of others doing it for you. It is still a fair comparison.
a3voices 11y ago
Actually you'd have to adjust the numbers by money supply increase, which grows faster than inflation.

loumf 11y ago

$770,988,654.35 / http://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=350000000&cinyear1=1986&coutyear1=2015&calctype=1&x=92&y=15 http://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartin...

unreal37 11y ago

$300 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollars. Still seems like the rate of wealth of the richest 100 has exceeded inflation by 8X... Which is fine, just interesting.

oneJob 11y ago
Your instincts are correct: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/plutocrats-rise-new-global-super-rich-review http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/plutocrats-rise... "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich by Chrystia Freeland – review A necessary and at times depressing book about the staggeringly wealthy"
pyrrhotech 11y ago
I wouldn't say it's "fine". The well-documented increasing wealth-inequality is going to be a major problem to solve in the next century. As automation becomes more prevalent, it will only get worse with the money ultimately going to fewer and fewer hands.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  It seems like the relevant problems to solve are 1) how to provide enough support to all people so that the "floor" isn't so low as to be despairing and 2) how to help people to be mindful that sometimes, you will not be on top of the pile, and that's OK. Inequality itself is a function of the uncounted dimensions of comparison amongst humans. Wealth is just a proxy target for this underlying fact. Make wealth equal by the most gentle mechanisms imaginable and the dynamics will just shift to some other dimension. It's like whack-a-mole with abstract concepts we barely understand baked into our monkey brains.
- ergothus 11y ago
  One quote I saw somewhere said something like "if inequality grows too extreme, you will have the choice of redistributing wealth through taxation, or redistributing poverty through revolution". I had never thought of poverty as something one could distribute, so that quote has stuck with me.

dragonwriter 11y ago

$350 million (the amount referenced in the article) in 1986 dollars is $760 million in 2015 dollars. [0] Still quite a bit less than $5 billion. [0] http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=1986&year2=2015 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=19...

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Wealth disparity is a lot worse now than it was in 1986. So you have to take that into account also.
- adpirz 11y ago
  I think that's exactly what that shows. Real median income (2014 dollars) was 51,000 in 1986. Today, it's 53,000[0]. Wealth in the middle hasn't changed much, and all that GDP growth is being gobbled by the very top. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N
  - mhays 11y ago
    I think that's the joke.
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    Or you know... Bill Gates et al created a segment of the economy that didn't exist. Inflammatory language like "gobbled up" really annoys me. It's not like all that Microsoft stock would be evenly distributed among the middle class if he had never come along.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      OK, so entrepreneurs "grow the pie" while gobbling up most of the newly created pie.
      - 11y ago

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Even that's not right, you need to compare to per capita GDP. $350 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollar, but per capita GDP was just $19.1k in 1986. So $750 million corresponded to 39.2k times the per capita GDP. Today per capita GDP is $54.6k, so $5 billion is 91.5k times that. Which means that the degree to which the 100th richest person is richer than the average is about 2.3x more than it was 30 years ago.

baudehlo 11y ago
Why does GDP matter if you're calculating individual wealth and thus purchasing power? (Genuine question btw - not disagreeing just interested)
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  It's a comparison of how relatively rich people are. Adjusting for inflation ignores economic growth.
  - baudehlo 11y ago
    Still confused (I got a D in economics so help me out). Can you elaborate more?
    - InclinedPlane 11y ago
      Taking inflation into account offsets the fact that dollars in 1986 didn't have the same value as dollars today. That allows you to compare, roughly, how rich different people are in different years. So you can compare the 100th richest person in the US in 1986 to the 100th richest person in the US today in terms of what they could buy. But the interesting thing, which is how this whole sub-thread started, is asking whether or not the rich are getting much richer even beyond economic growth. So the 100th richest person in the US is richer today than the 100th richest person from 1986, but overall, on average, people in the US are richer today than folks were in 1986, so that direct comparison tells you little. So how do you account for that? The easiest way is to just compare to GDP, but you need to account for the population difference, so you can just use per capita GDP. Basically you're asking: how much is this amount of wealth relative to the average single person slice of the "economic pie" in a given year. In 1986 that figure was roughly forty thousand "pie slices" for the 100th richest person, today that figure is ninety thousand "pie slices".

cpubreak 11y ago

You'd need to restrain from making a comment about adjusting the numbers when you can do it yourself instead of others doing it for you. It is still a fair comparison.

a3voices 11y ago

Actually you'd have to adjust the numbers by money supply increase, which grows faster than inflation.