The world's richest 1% are people earning more than $100,000. The American median wage is ~$30,000.
The flashy headline is basically saying first world living standards are unsustainable.
The flashy headline is basically saying first world living standards are unsustainable.
It's obviously worthwhile, it's about the survival of civilization after all. But apparently not worthwhile to the markets.
"On a global scale, an individual must have upwards of $744,400 in combined income, investments, and personal assets to rank in the top 1% of the world’s wealthiest individuals."
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...
Because the combination of all that is what capital is?
It does not count control of corporations and political power, which can be important as well. (But tend to go hand in hand to a degree.)
There's also gross worth which is a total lifetime worth. This would be high if you used for example expensive education. But then this one is much more nebulous.
I'd still say Europe and most of the USA is "first world living standards".
An engineer's pre-tax salary in Europe would be like 20-60k euros in the South/East and 30-80k in the North.
The USA just has a lot more capital in tech so the demand for labor is a lot more robust. Europe has decent engineers but it's hard to command a high wage when there are a lot less companies competing for you and they have less capital to be able to pay you with.
That is obviously true as can be seen from the rising CO2 levels and warming planet.
Sorry for the DM link but https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5388245/Pay-bonanza...
“Number of staff at scandal-hit Oxfam earning more than £100,000 has doubled in seven years”
The point that Oxfam these days is a business and reports like this are its product, and the metric of success is how much money these products make for Oxfam, not how much good they do. They technically still are a charity but they have strayed very far from their roots.