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If you are reading this site in a Western country you are almost certainly in the global 1%. Household income of $30k if I remember correctly.

• lisper 9y ago
  No. The world's population is 7 billion so 1% is 70 million. That's less than the population of Germany.
  • jgh 9y ago
    depends if the measurement is income or wealth. Income is like $32k, wealth is much higher.
    • 0xffff2 9y ago
      That doesn't really matter. The original claim categorically can't be true given that the population of all "western countries" is much, much larger than 1% of the total population.
  • Axsuul 9y ago
    You're confusing 1% of population with top 1% of wealth
    • 0xffff2 9y ago
      The "richest 1%" is the top 1% of the population when sorted by wealth.
• bhouston 9y ago
  Close. In terms of income, it is 30K EUR/yr or 37K USD/yr or 47K CAD/yr. But more accurate is to look at wealth, you are the top 1% if you have more than 700K EUR or 885K USE or 1.4M CAD. That is a fair bit. Most in US will not quality. According to: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...
• ddorian43 9y ago
  Costs are not the same.
• baddox 9y ago
  But probably not in the top 1% of wealth, right?
• avar 9y ago
  This $30k number is frequently cited and seems to always lead back to http://www.globalrichlist.com http://www.globalrichlist.com It's ~$30k after tax (net income). So the actual salary number is going to be higher. It's also misleading because most rich people are rich because of wealth, not income. You need ~$770k in assets to be in the global 1%.
  • gaius 9y ago
    But that is misleading too! In the UK there are millions (probably) of people who bought their houses before the recent property boom, who theoretically have an asset worth at least that much on paper. But since all other property in the country is similarly inflated, the wealth is not real in any meaningful sense. It’s just a number.
    • avar 9y ago
      It's not really misleading, the index never pretended to adjust your assets for the local cost of living. It also matters in a real sense. Who do you think is better off in absolute terms? Someone who owns a paid-off 200m^2 apartment in London, or someone with the same size apartment in whatever dirt-poor country you could name? The person with the apartment in London could sell it and move to a cheaper country (or even a small town in the UK) and be relatively wealthy, but the reverse isn't true. You're not poor in any meaningful sense compared to the rest of humanity just because you're struggling to pay off your monthly rent on your penthouse in Times Square.
      • gaius 9y ago
        It's not really misleading, the index never pretended to adjust your assets for the local cost of living. Of course it is, because ummm you live somewhere. That should be obvious but perhaps it isn't. A person with skill X, a teacher say, can be in "the 1%" (global) in the UK quite easily, but the same person with the same skill doing the same work, would be worse off in another country, so what other than the local economy is the variable? And someone in the global 1% in the UK is not especially wealthy because they need to spend it all straight away...