In Our Capitalist World Everyone Has A Wealth Number

capitalism

There are numbers for everything these days, and as President Trump makes clear often enough his  favorite number is 1.

But then in the wealth number categories, he really would not want to be assigned a 1 — such a low number signals poverty.  He doesn’t quite make a 10, but he can join his kind, like Silvio Berlusconi with similar passions, at number 9.

Yes, each one of us has been assigned a number, even the residents of Congo or Burundi, among the poorest in the world, who on average are 2.  There are 1.5 billion people in their bracket in which the lowest are a negative 2 and possess a net worth of 10 cents; the highest have $100.  Subsistence farmers mostly with a life of toil and hardship and a net worth that can quickly turn negative with a change of luck or the weather — the sad losers by heritage in a world where Mr. Trump is a winner according to himself, a son of a multimillionaire.

The next category with a net worth of $1000 is the median American renter — sound familiar to the young?  Indeed college graduates are worse off when loans encumber them to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars unless they went to an elite school — then it can be a $100,000 plus.  Across the world, each country presenting its own unique problems, the category encompasses 1.7 billion people.

If you have $10,000 — you hit category 4 and can apparently afford a new car.  Comprising 1.3 billion people in the US, it includes the median American family headed by someone with no college education.

You want to go higher?  Next are those with a net worth of $100,000.  At number 5, these folks can afford a mortgage.  Isn’t that just great … now they are owned by the bank.  And if they happen to buy a house at the crest of a real estate boom, they will soon have a mortgage larger than the worth of the house.  Oops!  It’s back down to minus 2.  Just like the board game ‘Snakes and Ladders’, you just landed on a a snake head.  There are 436 million people in category 5, and excluding children, we have now covered almost 5 billion people, that is almost (but not quite) everyone.

Category 6 is one million plus dollars, including Boris Johnson of the UK.  It consists of 40 million people and generally the worst snobs.  As Karl Marx sat brooding in the British Museum Library, the bourgeoisie were the focus of his ire in a magnum opus that caused much worry for them mostly in the twentieth century.  No doubt he also meant the categories 7 through 11 remaining in this compilation.

Ten million dollars is the floor for category 7 which houses 1.7 million people globally.  ‘Houses’ is the right word for these people go in for multiple houses.

Big charity projects generally named after themselves like university buildings or professional schools usually go with a net worth of $100 million at least.  That is category 8 for a lucky 49,000 on our planet.

Category 9 is $1 billion and more (2700 in number); category 10 is $10 billion plus (only 150); and category 11 is over $100 billion and consists of just two people.  Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates are in this stratosphere capping Bloomberg’s numbers.

The 26 richest billionaires own as much as 3.8 billion people, the bottom half in the world.  That’s capitalism for you!

Dr Arshad M Khan (http://ofthisandthat.org/index.html) is a former Professor based in the U.S. whose comments over several decades have appeared in a wide-ranging array of print and internet media.  His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in the Congressional Record.


SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWS LETTER


 

Tags:

Support Countercurrents

Countercurrents is answerable only to our readers. Support honest journalism because we have no PLANET B.
Become a Patron at Patreon

Join Our Newsletter

GET COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX

Join our WhatsApp and Telegram Channels

Get CounterCurrents updates on our WhatsApp and Telegram Channels

Related Posts

Join Our Newsletter


Annual Subscription

Join Countercurrents Annual Fund Raising Campaign and help us

Latest News