The Modern Pharaohs of the Global Wealth Pyramid

When politics is a nonstop soap opera, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. And the big picture is this: A tiny handful of disgustingly rich people are hoarding all the wealth.

Each year, Credit Suisse produces a Global Wealth Report—a snapshot of who has how much money in this world of ours. During the past year, global wealth grew by 6.4%. More than a million new millionaires were minted in the USA. At the same time, the majority of Americans did not get a raise last year. The jobs that are likely to grow fastest here offer extremely low pay. And, on a global scale, seven out of ten people have less than $10,000 in wealth.

Here is the context for that: The mean global wealth is $56,540 per person. So why do the vast majority of people have less than a fifth of that? Because “While the bottom half of adults collectively own less than 1% of total wealth, the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 88% of global assets, and the top percentile alone accounts for half of total household wealth.”

The bottom half of the population owns one percent of the wealth. One percent of the population owns half the wealth. This has been true for years and we have not even pretended to do anything about it.

Historically, only wars, epidemics, and horribly bloody revolutions have turned around numbers like these. But we could start by not fucking repealing the estate tax. You evil, evil fucks.