1 vs 99

Social and economic inequality is something that has been a widely-publicized problem for a few years now.  The cause really took root in the 2011 protest dubbed “Occupy Wall Street”.   During about a 2-month period, protestors occupied Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district in order to raise awareness for their cause.  Little came from the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the phrase “we are the 99%” took root. Protestors rallied behind the fact that the global 1% controls 48% of the world’s wealth and we wanted to take the time try to put this perspective.

Perspective is an interesting thing; in the case of 1% vs 99%, depending on how you look at it, both can be good and bad.  Scoring a 99% on an exam is fantastic, but so is being in the top 1% of your field.  The crazy thing is that in the context of the 1% vs the 99% in economic inequality, the many of us are in the top 1%.

Now I know what you’re thinking… “there is no way I am in the top 1%”.   Well, if you make around $33,000 you rank in the top 1% globally.  I understand that’s a skewed statistic, we live in the United States, one of, if not the wealthiest country in the world. So, let’s break it down into just the U.S. It would take about 13x more income or $430,000 to be ranked in the top 1%. (Click here if you want to see how you rank: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/)

So as you can see perspective makes a big difference, and this gives us some idea how good it is to be living in the U.S. of A. where our median income ranks well above the global 1% mark. The Occupy Wall Street folks could have taken a lesson on this. I can see why they’d be angry if they thought those making above $430,000 (The global 0.1%) controlled 48% of the world’s wealth.