11 ms·
Where do the wealthiest 1% live?
- stegosaurus 12y agoI think that a PPP adjustment is required here to produce a reasonable analysis. Or, excluding primary residence. For the 0.1% or higher (whose wealth is sufficient for them to take advantage of globetrotting) absolute numbers might be important. 'The 1%' is not simply a matter of wealth; a person with $500K in the UK and in Nigeria are not really equivalent. The former is just a person who owns a normal home in the South East outright, the latter may well be in a position of power.
- omh 12y agoI think that a PPP adjustment is required here to produce a reasonable analysis This article is in response to the recent Oxfam report which talked about the wealth of the global 1%. So in that context the absolute wealth, in the way that Oxfam measured it, is relevant.
- semperfaux 12y agoThen perhaps a better response to the Oxfam report would be to at least attempt a more realistic measurement of wealth and present something similar with that addition/adjustment.
- sanderjd 12y agoI'm not sure I understand why adjusting for primary residence ownership would make it "a more realistic measurement of wealth".
- IanCal 12y ago> 'The 1%' is not simply a matter of wealth; a person with $500K in the UK and in Nigeria are not really equivalent. The former is just a person who owns a normal home in the South East outright, the latter may well be in a position of power. Isn't this just trying to correct for people using their wealth inefficiently?
- wallflower 12y agoFrom a Quora answer (can't post link because they, you know, suffer from login-o-rrhea.) > There's a quite famous post on Tianya community (one of the most prominent Chinese online community). There's a sub forum on Tianya specifically for people to showoff their wealth. 1) And one day, some guy start showing off his watches (IWC watch.) 2) Other people step in and start competing with him - more watches 3) Luxury cars (Lambos) 4) More Luxury cars, diamond rings 5) Then, things start to get interesting, some guy post this: Government approved mining permit. You ever heard about how Chinese coal mine owner could afford a dozen Hummers, private jets? Yeah... 6) And then, another guy post this, bank account with nearly 1 Billion Yuan (about 150 Million USD). 7) And the post got quiet for a bit until this guy show up, posting bunch of land ownership certificates (the little white note says: all fking go home!) 8) And the post got quiet for a long time, and then this guy step up and end the discussion once and for all: It's an invitation to 中南海 ( Zhongnanhai ), and official envelopes of CPC ( Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China ).' Here you have a very interesting social power structure of China: Level 1: Luxury goods (Phones, Watches, Cars, jewelry) Level 2: Possession of raw materials (mines, oil, steel...) Level 3: possession of large amount of money Level 4: possession of land. Level 5: Access to the power core. The guy might not even belong to core power, but the mere access to it, you have that kind of connection is valued more than any material wealth. There's your basic Chinese social structure in one sentence.
- unknownian 12y agohttps://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better You can bypass the issue with a URL trick (?share=1)
- titaniumdecoy 12y agoWhy not include that in the URL?
- jknightco 12y agoYou can actually add any query-string and that will work. I'm a fan of adding "?fuck=you" in the hopes that it shows up in their logs somewhere.
- acadien 12y agoAnyone else shocked that China only has 1.6m relative to the world? Maybe this is because it doesn't take into account relative cost of living and cost of goods. I imagine a million USD goes a lot further in Shanghai than in SF.
- blackguardx 12y agoShanghai is the most expensive city I have ever visited. Coming from San Francisco, most cities seem cheap. Not Shanghai.
- acadien 12y agoHm maybe it depends on your income level? I have friends in Shanghai that live on a fraction of what I live on in the US, we're in comparable income levels but no where near wealthy.
- ido 12y agoThis is common to many lower income countries. You can live like a poor student in Poland for very cheaply but an upper/upper-middle class lifestyle (a couple of nice new luxury cars, always having the latest iphones/ipads, fancy clothing/watches/jewelry, a nice house/apartment in a good location, etc) will cost the same or more in Warsaw as in Berlin or Vienna.
- rsync 12y agoUseless anecdote: I have been to shanghai, and agree that it is not cheap. However, other than special-case-outliers like Aspen and Davos, nowhere I have been is more expensive than Zurich. It's like, crazy expensive.
- KaoruAoiShiho 12y agoChina manipulates its currency so any number in dollars would be inaccurate. It probably has maybe 2-3 times the amount stated here. It's still a pretty poor country though per capita.
- DanBlake 12y agoI would love to see a deeper level map for the US- being able to zoom in on cities/states would be cool
- Spooky23 12y agoThere's a lot of cool stories hidden there. I know of one guy who is worth something like $100m. When he moved to a different town, he basically broke the school aid formula and had a dramatic impact on the schools revenue stream!
- craigds 12y agoAnother map supporting the notion that New Zealand is a made up country. Submitted to http://worldmapswithout.nz/ http://worldmapswithout.nz/
- gumby 12y ago> Another map supporting the notion that New Zealand is a made up country. So true! I flew east for hours and never saw the place. My sister supposedly "moved" there, but then a year or so later I saw her -- in Australia! Kim Dotcom is in trouble with the law. Allegedly he lives in this "New Zealand" place but what authorities are seizing his assets? USA. There must be a evil cabal who has inserted this "country" into so-called "educational" materials as a way of controlling youth. They've even gone as far as creating a seat at the UN general assembly for them. And defaced the name of the AAC biscuit. Stop the conspiracy!
- alexbecker 12y ago...they do know there are more than 4.7B people in the world, right?
- pedrosorio 12y agoIt does not make sense to include minors in "wealth reports".
- alexbecker 12y agoAh, thanks.
- georgeecollins 12y agoI'm a bleeding heart liberal but every time I see this kind of analysis I get uncomfortable. Most middle aged peole who live in Claifornia west of the I5 and own a house probably have a net worth > $700k. I would guess most people who read this site will have a greater net worth before they are forty, if not sooner. Are these rich people? If you live in Boston, New York or California you can have that net worth and just be getting by. It doesn't feel like you live a life of priveledge, or you have some kind of power over the world that other responsible employed adults don't have. It's hard to feel like that sort of wealth is really a social ill.
- sliverstorm 12y agoSure, you're "just getting by". But you are still wealthy- it is your wealth that lets you even hope to live there. If you were to cash out and move to Mexico, you'd practically be a shah. Wealth isn't just access to servants and lavish meals, it's access to anything other people want but can't afford. A house in San Francisco is such a thing, even if it doesn't have carved ivory statues and a moat.
- TTPrograms 12y agoFor most people, though, isn't living in that expensive environment a significant boost to their ability to earn at a level required to achieve that net worth? Not just San Fran, but any urban environment as opposed to, say, a rural environment. This suggests possibly massive disruption in wealth structure once augmented reality puts remote interaction on par with local interaction. If your day-to-day expenses are significantly more decoupled from your income how will spending patterns in the top 5% change? Would luxury spending increase, or perhaps individuals would be able to invest more and retire earlier?
- georgeoliver 12y agoThat assumes no adjustment in earnings, though. What will the labor supply/demand curve look like when you don't have to live in SV?
- 12y ago
- EGreg 12y agoWell obviously the wealthiest 1% are exactly 1% so there are going to be a lot of them! Did we really think there are tens of millions of Daddy Warbuckses?
- semperfaux 12y agoMy assumptions regarding where the term "the 1%" came from aside, it seems to me that it's fairly useless for exactly this reason. If you want to talk about people whose means significantly exceed the vast majority of others, a smaller proportion is almost certainly in order (without, as another comment mentions, a PPP adjustment or something similar).
- arfliw 12y agoCanada with 1.6 million is pretty surprising. That's roughly the same per capita as the US. China with only 1.6 million is downright shocking. You read about new billionaires in that country all the time. I guess the wealth is only flowing into a very small number of hands.
- desdiv 12y agoI believe those Chinese billionaires are counted in the USA, UK, Canada columns due to most of their assets being hidden overseas. They're partly the reason why the Canadian number is so high.
- rubiquity 12y ago> Canada with 1.6 million is pretty surprising. That's roughly the same per capita as the US. Home ownership, along with vacationing, is a core value of Canadian society. When you look at the average cost of a home (quite high) in Canada, along with this article defining "The 1%" as anyone with wealth of $798,000 or more, it's easy to see why there are so many Canadians.
- wicknicks 12y agoGermany with 2.8 million is equally interesting. The country's population is 80m. Atleast one in 35 people there is in the top 1%.
- Gurkenmaster 12y agoFrance has 3.5 million with an even smaller population of 66 million so one out of twenty. Even though it's not very stable from a financial perspective.
- aragot 12y agoAnd Russia? Not even on the map: 110 people own 35% of the wealth, more than $1bn each. http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-billionaire-wealth-inequality/25132471.html http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-billionaire-wealth-inequ...
- tomp 12y agoI don't get this article. > Obviously billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg are part of the 1%. But who else is? According to Credit Suisse, another 47m people There are 7 billion people in this world. 1% of that is 70 million, not 47 million. Never trust journalists writing about statistics (or anyone who hasn't studied statistics, they probably have no idea what they're talking about) (on second thought, don't trust people who have studied statistics either; they now enough to manipulate you).
- jimminy 12y agoThe image and number comes from the Credit Suisse report[1]. Inside of it, they describe their methodology, which explains the discrepancy. > "More specifically, since children have little formal or actual wealth ownership, we focus on wealth ownership by adults, defined to be individuals aged 20 or above." [1](page 5): https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=5521F296-D460-2B88-081889DB12817E02 https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...
- tomp 12y agoSeems a rather important detail to omit.
- justicezyx 12y agowow not so quickly slapped in the face...
- level09 12y agoThe remaining must be residing in the oil-rich middle east gulf countries, royal families who usually never disclose their finances.
- jqm 12y agoSounds like the group that is more of interest is the .01% or .001%. Love to see a map of that. Because nickle millionaires with $800,000 of home equity probably aren't the global movers and shakers.....
- claypoolb 12y agoThis chart is deceiving - it does not contemplate the "age" of the wealth (see: compounding interest). The graphic shows 4.9% of the 47MM regarded as "the 1%" live in Italy. Although I do not debate that the chart is factual, I will pose question to you, as a skeptic audience: have you done business in Italy within the last 100 years? Have you heard of your friends or your friends of friends doing business there? Innovation prevails. Regardless of the rate of compounding interest.
- tormeh 12y agoYou're all discussing this on a local scale. This is clearly about global upper-wealth distributions. That countries were used to group 1%ers was an arbitrary decision.