www.GlobalRichList.com

[GUNWOUNDS]

neh, never really liked that site. I typed in my fam's income and we dont make much. On the site it basically said. Though you are not rich, you definitely are very lucky, blah blah.

IMHO, I think that it is a little narrow-minded to glaringly compare and evaluate your wealth like they are doing on the site.

I could make say... one thousand U.S. dollars a month. Now in an economically crippled or underdeveloped country, this could be a goldmine. It could probably help dozens of people in certain countries. But what if you are living in america with a wife and one child? Do you think that a thousand dollars would give you a means to survive? No, it wouldnt.

[Dante]

I wasn't going to get involved, seeing as I didn't have a job and I don't know how much income the family generates, but I conveniently got a job just a few days ago. Working out how long I will be staying there, with the approximate number of hours and wages (both change on a regular basis)...

You are in the top 14.32% richest people in the world.

There are 5,140,577,619 people poorer than you.

Oh, and in case you

[DukeLeto]

You are in the top 0.902% richest people in the world.

There are 5,945,862,935 people poorer than you.

How do you feel about that? A bit richer we hope. Please consider donating just a small amount to help some of the poorest people in the world. Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx $34.37)

Oh, and in case you

[nemafakei]

"We reside barely above the average family income in the United States, yet make more money than 230 million Americans?

[GUNWOUNDS]

nema you made a tiny numerical typo.. i assume you meant 230 not 23 right?

[ps501]

"If life gives you lemons, make lemonaide." - Author Unknown

"You can be sad because roses have thorns, or you can be happy because thorns have roses." - Author Unknown.

Life is what you make of it.  Some people were born to be luckier (read Bill Gates, selling DOS to IBM before it was written)  Or Bill Cosby (american comedian) who grew up in the Harlem under very poor circumstances and is now one of the richest americans... or like Oprah.. The richest Black Female in America...

[Dude_Doc]

Life is what you make of it.  Some people were born to be luckier (read Bill Gates, selling DOS to IBM before it was written)

That is pretty easy to say when you're not born in a country where basic food, water and medicine is not something that is easy to come by...

;)

[ps501]

"That is pretty easy to say when you're not born in a country where basic food, water and medicine is not something that is easy to come by" 

Though this topic may be taking on a life of a new thread all by itself, but I think that water is fairly easy to come by in more countries than not.  (That is until global warming stops/alters the jet stream and the climates of the world change dramatically, but that is a different topic) 

I wouldn't say that basic food, water, and medicine is easy to come by in any country, though I would be inclined to say that those items would be easier to come by in a more socialized country than the USA.  While we may have more "rich" people consider:

In 2000, 11.3% of the U.S. population, or 31.1 million people, lived in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001).

One out of three non-elderly Americans were uninsured during the years 2002-2003; 82 Million People, Including many Middle Class Americans, Were Uninsured at Some Point over the Past Two Years; Most Were Uninsured for At Least Nine Months

Whereas if you go to many places in Europe medical care is a given, and all are covered; and with many more social programs, fewer are homeless and/or live in poverty. 

So I wouldn't be one to say just because you were born in America that your "basic needs" are going to be met.  Now I will say that your odds of becoming "rich" are better in many western countries, than in most 3rd world countries; however, take a drug lord in Afghanistan... that person would certainly be fairly high in the globalrichlist classification of income - and they are living in one of the worst places (in terms of the forementioned "basic needs") on earth.

[Andrew]

Whereas if you go to many places in Europe medical care is a given, and all are covered; and with many more social programs, fewer are homeless and/or live in poverty.

Just like Canada :) (although I don't know about homeless people)

We're worried about social issues and not whether Iraq is going to nuke us with their nuclear missles. ;)

[Edric O]

This small article was posted on another forum I visit:

The Cavernous Divide

By Scott Klinger, AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/story/21544/

Two magazine covers stood out in poignant contrast on newsstands last week. Forbes magazine released its 29th annual listing of the world's billionaires. Time magazine's cover story wondered "How to End Poverty."

It was a good year for the global billionaires' club. Their ranks grew to 691, up 17 percent from the previous year. Collectively, the wealth of the world's billionaires reached $2.2 trillion, up more than 57 percent over the last two years.

Poverty is growing as well. Time reports that nearly half of the world's 6 billion residents are poor. Over one billion of them subsist on less than $1 a day. In the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of impoverished Americans rose 3.7 percent in 2003. The number of children living in poverty rose 6.6 percent.

Forbes seeks to explain the billionaires' success by noting that a majority of those on the list are "self-made." Forbes' web site features an interactive quiz that asks, "Do you have what it takes to become a billionaire?" and proceeds to explore things like marital status and hobbies. The idea is that many billionaires made it on their own.

But to suggest that membership in the growing billionaires' club requires only a combination of hard work and character traits ignores some dramatic shifts in global economic rules that explain the cavernous divide that has developed between the very rich and the very poor.

Tax rates have fallen on upper-income citizens and corporations worldwide. Fifty years ago in the United States, the highest marginal income tax rate was 91 percent; today it is 34 percent. As recently as 1979, taxes on capital gains from the sale of stock, real estate and businesses were 35 percent; today they are 15 percent. Corporate taxes as a percentage of the U.S. economy have shrunk from 4.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1965 to just 1.5 percent in 2002. While corporate taxes have declined throughout the world, they have plummeted in the United States, leaving only Iceland among industrialized countries with a lower corporate tax burden.

Several of the wealthiest billionaires capitalized on public assets and made their fortunes by buying formerly public assets. This was the case with Mexican Carlos Slim Helu, the world's fourth richest man, who used inherited wealth to buy a substantial share of Mexico's privatized national telephone company. U.S. billionaires Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, and Larry Ellison of Oracle would not be in Forbes' top 20 billionaires had the U.S. government not invested tens of billions of public dollars developing computers and the internet.

Some billionaires' fortunes rest upon paying their employees poverty wages. Such is the case for the Walton family (numbers 10 through 14 on the Forbes list.) Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world. Many of its U.S. workers are so poorly paid that they must rely on food stamps and other forms of public assistance to get by. Such forms of government aid represent an indirect government subsidy to corporations whose business model does not include paying employees enough to live on. Worldwide, billions are gained by outsourcing service, production and manufacturing functions to workers who labor in sweatshop conditions in countries like China.

The role of government policy in determining who has wealth and who does not continues to expand. During the recent debate on the bankruptcy bill, federal lawmakers refused to close the "asset protection trust" loophole increasingly used by millionaires and billionaires to shelter mansions and other assets from creditors in bankruptcy. Those same lawmakers weakened protections that protect the family homes of ordinary people from creditors during bankruptcy.

Forbes is wrong; none of the billionaires did it alone. The chasm between rich and poor is not a divide between who has intelligence and drive and who does not. Rather it results from a society whose rules allow some to amass wealth greater than could be enjoyed in a thousand lifetimes, while they deny others enough money to scrape through just one lifetime.

[ps501]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/07/commentary/everyday/sahadi/index.htm?cnn=yes

"NEW YORK (CNN/Money)

[Edric O]

Well, when your wealth and income put you in the top 10-20% wealthiest people in your country (or in the world, depending on what frame of reference we're using), I think it's pretty safe to say that you're rich.

[alchemi2]

You are in the top 3.35% richest people in the world.

There are 5,798,782,608 people poorer than you.

Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx

[Voodoo Daddy]

You are in the top 0.318% richest people in the world.

There are 5,980,865,435 people poorer than you.

How do you feel about that? A bit richer we hope. Please consider donating just a small amount to help some of the poorest people in the world. Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx $102.08)

Oh, and in case you