How accurate is the statistic that "1% of the population owns 95% of the entire wealth"?

I think that only applies in Haiti?

@GabrielsLamb And the U.S. This country has wealth disparity rivaling so-called “banana republics”.

It’s pretty accurate, maybe even a bit conservative. It can only be so accurate, since much of the “capital” that is owned by the rich is resources and land, which change in price.

A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned 1% of global wealth source

It’s not accurate. It’s fairly far off (stretch it from “top 1%” to “top 10%” and you’re on to something). But the truth is also infuriating.

“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 38.3% of all privately held stock, 60.6% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”

Source

@incendiary_dan I get that very good point but statistically speaking I think that is unrealistically high and therefore a bit dramatic… Where in places like Haiti, those statistics are legitimate and the people actually EXPERIENCE it.

as they look up at that ONE house on the hill from their filth and squalor and corrupt police bullshit.

@Qingu Your source is the U. S. only.

Fair ‘nuff. About the same as the world as a whole though… which sucks considering how much of the world lives in shitty autocracies.

@Qingu As opposed to a shitty oligarchy like what we are rapidly becoming?

I would say that the statement is an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Becoming? Did you mean “became sometime in the 1980’s?”

I once thought that, but then it got worse. Charting our progress, I think it best that those of us in the bottom 50% better enjoy ourselves now while we still have anything at all.,

@GabrielsLamb That is how the rest of the developed world sees the United States.

btw @OP, @YARNLADY & @Qingu have got it right.

As always I agree with Jerv.

thanks guys

In the US, it’s currently 42% of the wealth held by 1%. That’s about the same wealth disparity we hit in 1929 just before the great depression. It’s time that the very wealthy paid at least the same tax rate that the working class pays. It’s important to remember that Class Warfare can go both ways, and it is rarely the poor taking advantage of the rich.

And the top 2.5% of the population owns 50% of the wealth
I see from that chart the Bottom 88% of the population controls 7%.

Quite a disparity. (The kind of disparity that fosters revolution.)