HOW RICH ARE YOU?

[Zywiec]

Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where would you sit on one of those lists? Here's your chance to find out.

Just enter your annual income into the box below and hit 'show me the money'


http://www.globalrichlist.com/

:toast:

[NashVegas]

1. According To This

= 270,434,783
You are the 270,434,783 richest person in the world! You're in the TOP 4.5%
richest people in the world!

[nickinSTL]

2. top 2.88% in the world

number 173,043,479.

Doesn't take what I OWE into account, though...

I'd be fine if it wasn't for the @#$% credit card...and, yes, I know, I shouldn't use it...but, it's hard to avoid when you're NOT rich (by American standards) and supporting 2 adults.

[Atman]

3. Cool...I haven't seen HyperCard since my old Mac II.

I'm guessing this wasn't an MIT project.

.

[county worker]

4. Wealth is your net assets not your annual income.

Add up the market value of what you own plus any liquid assets like cash and marketable securities. Subtract what you owe and that is how wealthy you are. I have a pretty good income but I'm not wealthy by any means.

[AndyTiedye]

26. With the boom-and-bust in real estate, Most Homeowners may have a hard time calculating This

[county worker]

93. You can get the market value of you home from realtors

It's based on sales of homes comparable to yours in your neighborhood in the last 6 months.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

5. Top 1% with just my income top 0.5% combined with my wifes.

[Madam Mossfern]

6. Top .78% but.......

I live in New Jersey in a County that has close to the highest taxes.

[NJCher]

31. well, then, we must be neighbors

:)



Cher

[GoesTo11]

7. I tried putting in the $500,000 that financial execs are whining is too little

# 107,565

TOP 0.001%

bastards.

(actually, it tops out with $210,000 getting the same answer).

[Mr. McD]

8. BS - top - 0.43% I don't think so.

[GoesTo11]

10. You're paying next time we go out for beers, buddy

[sandnsea]

16. $150,000 is the top 5% in the US

We're the richest country in the world and there's only 300 million of us. If your income is in the top 5% in this country, how much better off are you than the billions in complete poverty?

[tyedyeto]

43. If $150,000 is in the top 5% and my paltry $17,500 is between 11 &12%

there is something drastically wrong with the world and especially our country.

[sandnsea]

45. India, China, Africa

Think about it.

Several billion people, most in complete poverty.

[Hannah Bell]

62. complete poverty would be they have nowhere to live & nothing to eat.

not the case in china at least. most people have housing & food, even if it's not luxurious.

though plenty of people in luxury in china; they bought more cars than americans this year.

[sandnsea]

66. 10% on less than a dollar a day

130 million people in China in complete poverty. There are many more people who are in complete dispair in this world than even live in the US. Obviously our wealth and income, either one, is the top 10% in the world.

I cannot understand why people fight this. I have never seen a child in this country who had no other choice but to look for food in a garbage dump. There are millions like that around the world.

[Reterr]

72. Huh?

A lot of people in China live in the kind of poverty that we Americans can't even imagine-I have lived there.... Don't believe the RW conspiracy garbage-if you are an American (westerner really), you have it better than most of the world. We kid ourselves when we think otherwise...

[Hannah Bell]

83. huh? was there something in my post about most chinese being richer than

westerners, or not being poor by western standards?

what does "complete poverty" mean to you? to me it means homeless & starving. are most chinese homeless & starving? you tell me. i know someone who lives there, too. she never mentioned that.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

47. What do you do for a living?

[leftstreet]

9. You can get 25 fruit trees for 8 bucks in Honduras

I didn't know that.

[slampoet]

52. You can get 100 pine trees for $25 in the USA.

They're saplings sure but.......

[ZombieHorde]

11. Would situations, such as living in a country with UH, be a major factor?

[sandnsea]

12. 11.5%

Some people on this board need a reality check.

[seabeyond]

13. i have never gazed, envious or otherwise, at a list of the rich. lol. n/t

[SmileyRose]

14. Top 12% - but - They have income and wealth mixed up.

They said for $74 you can buy a trailer in Uganda to fight HIV. I challenge you to find an inhabitable trailer in the US of A for $74.

Although I am very low on the totem pole in the US annual income wise, I am well aware where I stand on a world view. (I am top 12%) I am also well aware that even in US terms I am much wealthier than most people who's US annual incomes are well above mine. My home and car are paid for, I have no extra debt. I have a years supply of food and medicine already in my house. If the worst happens and I have nothing, I have a variety of friends and family who would be fighting over me. Many "rich" people in the US can't come near to saying that.

So measuring wealth, or even buying power by straight income is not relevant. IMHO.

[Muttocracy]

36. yep - people in those countries aren't paying rent like I am - and I don't spend on the crap

that they mention (TVs, DVDs, etc.)

[ZombieHorde]

15. "You are the richest person in the world!"

This is what it told me, somehow I feel this is a mistake, unless they are taking my zombie DVD collection into account.

[Mike 03]

17. Yeah, but it doesn't matter.

You're in the TOP 0.01%
richest people in the world!

If you only knew how little I care
.

[Still Sensible]

18. Top 0.27% but it is not measuring wealth

it's measuring annual income... big difference. I'd have some wealth if I could save a lot of that, but I haven't so I am not wealthy.

[sandnsea]

49. So you blew all your money

and haven't purchased one tangible item -- therefore you are as broke as someone scavenging through garbage piles in India??

Is that your position?

[Still Sensible]

61. Not at all

I have a decent net worth, but I am not "wealthy" by any means.

[sandnsea]

63. Are you worth more than your annual income? n/t

[kestrel91316]

19. That man (or woman) is rich whose wants are few. And because all I want right

now is a new sofa and a new (to me) car and a new paring knife, I count myself wealthy almost beyond measure.

People with lots of money tend not to have much love or happiness in their lives, so I count them poor.

[NeedleCast]

20. ROFL

I somehow doubt 65,000/year in DC puts me in the top 1% of richest people in the world.

[Truth2Tell]

82. Then you are seriously out of touch with the way

most of the humans on our planet live. I think this little excercise was designed to help inform people like yourself.

[Oregone]

21. Wow, Im above people with large homes, good jobs, food, community, etc.

As I was posting in another thread, dollar figures dont really tell you how wealthy you are. Its all relative to the cost of living in your society. Yeah, maybe if I was making that dough in Ghana, I could live like a king. Some people making half my salary live the good life in other nations. This is a tad deceptive and irrelevant.

[Bonhomme Richard]

22. This year top 0.01% ...WOW

Doesn't feel like it.

[spooky3]

23. we'd all be a lot richer

if it weren't for the Bush disaster.

[TahitiNut]

24. "You're in the TOP 10.81% richest people in the world!"

Whoopee.

[Waiting For Everyman]

25. That gizmo is full of it -

I put in a lower number a second time, and it went up.

[MadHound]

28. I put in $0

And it says that I'm in the top 48.03%:wtf: I guess the other 52% are actually giving money away rather than making it:shrug:

[Waiting For Everyman]

34. !

:rofl:

Umm, is this a "guilt people into a donation" gimmick?

Seems so, evidently. Goes to show... never trust numbers.

[PVnRT]

86. Yes, it is

[Zywiec]

38. I think you need to refresh the page.

Putting in zero provides no answer.

:hi:

[Hannah Bell]

64. but if you'd been a starving african who put in $0, the result would have been different.

the calculator knew you were trying to pull a fast one.

[BlooInBloo]

40. What are the 2 numbers?

My sample of the model they used exhibited no failure of monotonicity.

[johnnyrocket]

27. Yeah, but "$500,000 isn't a lot of money" according to Bank CEO's.

...so ya know.

[Scooter24]

29. We're in the top 0.001%...

Hmm...that seems kind of high, but whatever.

[snooper2]

87. Don't put in any pennies :)

designer of the website did a pretty shitty job..

[alittlelark]

30. It says we are among the top .001%.... BS

Try buying a house for cash in Silicon Valley for 3x our yearly income. There is NO way we are among the 107,000 richest in the world.....not possible. I looked at their 'calculations' page and it was QUITE sparse in detail.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

44. It's for individuals $300,000 a year probably is in the top .001% worldwide.

[alittlelark]

48. I still have a problem accepting it.

Our kids are in public school...

We are by no means rich - we are 'well off' and can go out for nice dinners and have vacations - but I cannot accept that we are in the top .001%.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

You may not be, an individual making that much clearly would be.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

50. You may not be, an individual making that much clearly would be.

[alittlelark]

54. I am not an individual - I am part of a family of 4

Saving $ for college, saving for retirement....


Living in Los Altos where the avg home goes for 1.3 mill. You have to live here to make the high tech $$$. I could move back to NM and have a much lower cost of living - but my salary would be lower as well.

We have a vacation home in NM so we can 'keep it real' for the kids (they are surrounded by spoiled brats) - they hang w/ kids from the Jemez and Zia reservations all summer and xmas break.


Please don't judge.

Hubby and I both came from middle/lower class New Mexicans.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

56. Don't be so defensive. The global rich list is about individual income not family income.

That's my point. It doesn't take into account cost of living either. No one is judging you. Although, anyone who owns 2 homes though is wealthy in comparison to world standards.

David

[alittlelark]

58. NM real estate is cheap, and a better investment

than the stock (ponzi scheme) market.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

59. Wise decision.

[Reterr]

73. I think this is compared to people (a lot) around the globe who can barely eat

Yes...compared to people around the world, who cannot even think it terms of things like owning a house, we are immeasurably rich.
Having traveled the world a fair amount, I find this blindspot on a supposedly lefty site like DU bizarre. Most Americans have no fucking clue how BILLIONS of people worldwide live......
You are comparing yourself here to people who worry about whether they will have enough to feed themselves...not about what kind of home they can buy etc...

This makes sense to me that most Americans who are lower-middle class and above would be squished into that top percentile given how many poor people there are in the world and how poor they are...

[BlooInBloo]

32. Weird model. It's got a kink in it around $20k - $40k.

[New Dawn]

33. Their numbers are deceptive because they are only looking at INCOME

...and not other assets (like property and stocks). Here is an important study on wealth and power (in the USA): http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

A few quotes from the article:

"In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%."

"Most amazing of all, the top 0.1% -- that's one-tenth of one percent -- had more combined pre-tax income than the poorest 120 million people (Johnston, 2006)."

[JerseygirlCT]

35. That's clever

Wonder how it's working for them?

[readmoreoften]

37. Top 14.82% GROSS, Top 80% NET (because it wouldn't go any lower.)

Too bad I don't live in a country where I don't need A CAR and A PHONE. Or live in a country where I don't have to pay back student loan debt. Or get free medical treatment. If you count those bills, I'm lower than the readout would go.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

77. I got it down to $100 dollars.

[Redbear]

39. As for wealth, Ive heard it this way

Do you have indoor plumbing?

If you answered yes, you are already in the top 50% of wealth.

Do you own a car?

Welcome to the top 10% of wealth

[Lisa0825]

41. I wanted to share that link on Facebook, but FB says it is blocked for

being abusive! :wtf: I see nothing abusive about the site! Sure, its formula could be disputed, but there is nothing ban-worthy about it!

[tyedyeto]

42. You are the 701,964,412 richest person in the world! You're in the TOP 11.69%

And I earn less than $18,000 per year. Even earning that much, I've had to cancel my health insurance, which amounted to approximately 1/5th of my gross income. It was a choice between paying the rent or having a benefit that I have only used 3 times over the past 6 years. Money in my pocket for gas, groceries etc fell behind my health care needs.

[Incitatus]

46. OMG! I'm in the top 1 percent.

I feel so guilty. I should donate some money to this charity that I've never heard about.

[Ioo]

51. You are the 34,567,347 richest person in the world! You're in the TOP 0.57%

[lpbk2713]

53. I haven't checked my Lotto tickets yet.

:shrug:

[Warren Stupidity]

55. Distorted picture

Here is a better one, The L Curve:



Tour of the
US Income Distribution,
"The L-Curve"

The red line represents a graph of family income across the population. The height of the curve at any point is the height of a stack of $100 bills equalling that income. Unless you have a very old browser you will be able to zoom. Be sure to zoom both in and out.

The US population is represented along the length of the football field, arranged in order of income.

Median US family income (the family at the 50 yard line) is ~$40,000 (a stack of $100 bills 1.6 inches high.)

--The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 4 inches high.

--At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about a foot high.

--The curve reaches $1 million (a 40 inch high stack of $100 bills) one foot from the goal line.

--From there it keeps going up...it goes up 50 km (~30 miles) on this scale!

http://www.lcurve.org/

[Redbear]

69. Thats a great graphic on US income inequality

But if you expand it to the world -

97% of the world will be between the 0 and 50 yard lines

[Warren Stupidity]

105. Uh, no. 50% of the world would be between the 0 and 50 yard line

Each 10 yards represents 1/10 of the population. The height of the line (its thickness) represents the income of that segment.

[Zywiec]

92. How is this relevant to the more than 6,758,551,479 people worldwide

in which we make up only 4.5%?

Do you have a fancy L curve chart for the entire world to show where the US fits in?

[Warren Stupidity]

104. The the line on the bottom is flatter..

And the staggering anomaly of the actual rich, the ruling elite, is even more starkly represented.

Pitting one subset of peasants against another is an ancient game.

[madville]

57. Top 2.3%, I really do feel I'm rich

I make $43,000 a year. I have a house, a truck, a little boat and trailer. I have cable TV, high speed internet, I play golf a few times a month, I have health insurance, my son has health insuance, I have $4,000 in my checking account and more in savings.

I really dobelieve I am in the top 2.3% in the world, we do live in the wealthiest country so it only makes sense the portion of our population that lives in poverty is still probably in the top 20% in the world.

[greenbriar]

60. not very

= 37,285,340
You are the 37,285,340richest person in the world! You're in the TOP 0.62%
richest people in the world!

[ContinentalOp]

65. So ridiculous as many have pointed out.

I'd be interested to see something like this instead.

total family income
+ company paid vacations
+ company paid retirement benefits
+ company or government paid health benefits
- monthly rent/mortgage payment
- total medical expenses
- cost of food, heating, transportation, etc.
/ number of dependants

Or maybe a ratio of after tax income to local average food, healthcare, transportation and housing per sq ft. costs.

[sandnsea]

67. On your next vacation

you could go to China and ask them!

[Redbear]

68. It would be great fun to explain to the 2.6 billion people without basic sanitation

and the 1.1 billion without any electricity ever how they are really better off because they don't have to pay utility bills.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

78. That's good stuff.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

79. It seems like there is a disconnect among many here doesn't it?

[Zywiec]

85. Sure, I wonder how many of the billions in China, Africa and India have

- company paid vacations
- company paid retirement benefits
- company or government paid health benefits

:eyes:

[rndmprsn]

70. You're in the TOP 2.59% richest people in the world!

You are the 155,652,174 richest person in the world!

etc...

[Maru Kitteh]

71. I'm so rich I have a house to keep me up at night worrying about losing it.

I'm so rich, I have a mother that I lay awake at night worrying about how to care for and support, but I thank God she has us, and we have her.

That's how rich I am.

[underseasurveyor]

74. I'M RICH I'M RICH

Not in cash or assets no, no, no, I'm dirt poor, but rather I'm rich in heart and spirit :-)

[ninja8590]

75. You're in the TOP 0.85% richest people in the world!

Seems a bit off to me...that's without including the husband's income...only mine.

This is a teacher's salary (college level but still)...come on.

[Two Americas]

76. so misleading

It costs more to live in the places where you make more.

Check out their mission statement.

The goal here is to get American workers to think they are privileged and wealthy and lucky and to stop their complaining and ignore that they are being stolen from.

[lukasahero]

91. Your American privilege is showing

Why do you say their goal has anything to do with getting "Americans" to believe something? The site offers calculations in the pound, yen, euro and can as well as us dollar.

Their goal, as stated in their mission statement is "to challenge people's perception of their personal wealth." and "do something which would help people understand, in real terms, where they stand globally. And make us realise that in fact most of us (who are able to view this web page) are in the privileged minority."... "And give some of their extra money to a worthwhile charity."

I understand people in America are hurting. But, as someone posted up-thread, our children aren't scavenging for food in garbage dumps.

[Two Americas]

103. uh huh

I stand by what I said. It is a perennial right wing theme to say that the poor here have it good, and to make these sort of comparisons to "prove" that.

People are scavenging for food in dumpsters.

[Breeze54]

80. " You're in the TOP 0.94% richest people in the world !! "

Your Rich List position = 56,699,580

You are the 56,699,580 richest person in the world!

Yeah, riiiggghhht! :eyes:

And I already give chickens and goats and sheep at the Holidays.

Great "quiz" though... NOT! Rather insulting, imho.

[pork medley]

81. It is largely accepted today...

that development and under-development are not autonomous and juxtaposed phenomena which can be examined each within its own terms, but that they are phenomena organically and functionally interrelated.

That is a common place. What is less familiar is the observation that not only is development of the periphery blocked by the very existence of the center, and the growth of the center reinforced by the resources drawn from the periphery, but that this center is today over-developed to the very same extent that the periphery is under-developed.

What can this over or under-development be measured against? It may be measured in relation to the level of development which the existing economic system, in this case the capitalist mode of production, can, under present historical conditions, secure at the level of the whole of mankind.

This means that the United States can be the United States and Sweden can be Sweden only because others, that is, the two billion inhabitants of the Third World, are not.

This also means that every material equalization from the top down is excluded. If, by some miracle, a socialist and fraternal system, regardless of its type or model, were introduced tomorrow morning the world over, and if it wanted to integrate, to homogenize mankind by equalizing living standards, then to do this it would not only have to expropriate the capitalists of the entire world, but also dispossess large sections of the working class of the industrialized countries, of the amount of surplus value these sections appropriate today. It seems this is reason enough for these working classes not to desire this ‘socialist and fraternal’ system and to express their opposition by either openly integrating into the existing system, as in the United States of America or the Federal Republic of Germany, or by advocating national paths to socialism, as in France or Italy.

This is not a question of principles, but a question of interests. A few global figures will be enough to show this. In 1973, the average annual wage in the USA amounted to around US$10,500. The population of the entire capitalist world at that time was about 2.6 billion, and there was a little over a billion economically active. To pay all these economically active people on an American scale would require close to eleven trillion dollars. However, the total national income of these countries in 1973 amounted to only $2.7 trillion.

This means, even if all income earned without the counterparts of labor, profits, rents, interest rates, etc., (which are all components of surplus value) were abolished and mankind resolved to be satisfied from now on with simple reproduction, relinquishing all progress and consuming its entire product, it would not, under these hypothetical conditions, be able to reach more than an average wage of $2,500 per year, that is, a quarter of the American wage.

It is precisely this that severs solidarity between the working classes of the center and the periphery. While all the working classes were subjected to exploitation, no matter how disparate its degree, even when one was 90% exploited and the other 10%, they had an interest in uniting and fighting arm-in-arm, and together expropriating their exploiters, despite the fact that this expropriation improved the situation for some considerably more than for others. But from the moment the workers of certain countries ceased to be the suppliers of surplus value (no matter how little) and became recipients, the situation was reversed and the positions of the working classes became antagonistic to one another.

http://doc.maoist.ws/sp/sp.html

[Lucian]

84. I am ranked 773,071,647 (top 12.88%) with my retail job.

:eyes:

[ProfessorGAC]

88. Wow!

That's all i can say about the result i got.
GAC

[SidDithers]

89. 52,347,878...

which puts me in the top .87%

Sid

[lukasahero]

90. This thread is a perfect example of the self-centered obliviousness of Americans

A quick little hit to remind us that, even in this disastrous economy, we're still living better than most of the world and people here still whine about how bad we have it.

Insert :shakesherheadinwonder: emoticon here.

[county worker]

96. We don't live in the rest of the world. We live here and we have to

have incomes to deal with that fact. I think it is irrelevant to measure our incomes with the rest of the world without putting it into context with the cost of living everywhere.

[Zywiec]

97. We don't live in the rest of the world

Amen to that. I'm sick and tired of the rest of the world worrying about how much I use of the world's resources.

It's irrelevant to them if I want to keep my house steaming warm in the winter or frosty cold in the summer.

I like the way you think!

[county worker]

98. Did you forget the sarcasm smiliey?

Don't try to define me!

[Zywiec]

100. You said it was irrelevant to measure our incomes with the rest of the world

without putting it into context with the cost of living everywhere. I think the site made the context clear:

$8 could buy you 15 organic apples OR 25 fruit trees for farmers in Honduras to grow and sell fruit at their local market.

$30 could buy you an ER DVD Boxset OR a First Aid kit for a village in Haiti.

$73 could buy you a new mobile phone OR a new mobile health clinic to care for AIDS orphans in Uganda.

$2400 could buy you a second generation High Definition TV OR schooling for an entire generation of school children in an Angolan village.

[county worker]

101. People are responding to the op with mea culpas not taking into account the cost of living elsewhere

That is what I was posting about.

I think it is foolish to say we are some how immoral or bad because we make more money or have more material things than other people on earth and leave it at that.

There is nothing wrong with being happy and living well. It is our job to try to help others be happy and live well also. But beating yourself up because others are not living as well as you is not good.

[lukasahero]

102. No one is saying that we should beat ourselves up

I was saying we should stop whining. I was specifically saying we should be grateful for what we have and we should share our wealth instead of thinking we have it so bad - we don't.

Regardless of 'context', American citizens have far more wealth than most of the world. Rather than whine about how 'poor' we are, maybe it wouldn't hurt us to be more aware of the conditions of the world, be grateful for what we do have and try a little harder to help those who have less.

[slackmaster]

94. I'm chronically sub-rich

:argh:

[cliffordu]

95. #824,785,999

I rawk!!!!!

:headbang:

[otohara]

99. TOP 0.92%

for now anyway

[bird gerhl]

106. 190,434,780

I'm in the TOP 3.17% richest people in the world!

Take THAT, 6.5-6.7 billion other people! Guess you'll just have to work harder for that sack of rice!

[ddeclue]

107. Not so much here in the USA though...

= 21,250,732
You are the 21,250,732 richest person in the world! You're in the TOP 0.35%
richest people in the world!