Big Booger
December 6th, 2006, 03:29 AM
Imagine this, 40% of every bit of wealth on planet earth is in the hands of only 1% of the entire population, some 6 billion of us. Sounds like something out of Robin Hood or one of those other medieval stories where the king owns all.
Except it's not a story, it's reality:
Experts have long worried about the skewed distribution of the world’s income, with vast rewards massing in the hands of a wealthy elite and precious little left over for the vast majority of the global population.
But even as income inequality has reached near record levels in many countries, the distribution of the world’s wealth — things like stocks, bonds or physical assets like land — has become even more narrowly concentrated than income, according to a new report by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University.
In 2000, the top 1 percent of the world’s population — some 37 million adults with a net worth of at least $515,000 — accounted for about 40 percent of the world’s total net worth, ...
READ ON MY WILLY NILLY FRIENDS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/business/worldbusiness/06wealth.html?ref=business
Except it's not a story, it's reality:
Experts have long worried about the skewed distribution of the world’s income, with vast rewards massing in the hands of a wealthy elite and precious little left over for the vast majority of the global population.
But even as income inequality has reached near record levels in many countries, the distribution of the world’s wealth — things like stocks, bonds or physical assets like land — has become even more narrowly concentrated than income, according to a new report by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University.
In 2000, the top 1 percent of the world’s population — some 37 million adults with a net worth of at least $515,000 — accounted for about 40 percent of the world’s total net worth, ...
READ ON MY WILLY NILLY FRIENDS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/business/worldbusiness/06wealth.html?ref=business