Wow i’m rich!
[This is an old post that I never really finished. So I wrapped up the last little thought that I had on the topic and posted it anyway.]
So, as many of you know there was recently a report stating that 2% of the population of the world owned 50% of the wealth. More than likely you thought (just like me) "Those rich bastards! Always hording all the money to themselves! Someone needs to give 'The Man' the old 'what for'!!"
After reading the article on BBC and on Slashdot I was steamed. Then I noticed a link to a site in a Slashdot comment. It was a site that lets you enter your annual income and showed you where you rated on the global rich list. To my suprise I was part of the top 2%. I certainly didn't feel rich yesterday as I haggled with the mechanic to get him to do a half ass job on my breaks so that I could afford to pay for the work so that I could get to work the next day. After a bit of tinkering I discovered that $44,016 is the magic number that puts you in the top 2%. Well apparently these calculations are based on your annual income relative to the world wide average annual income of $5,000. It does not take in to account some major factors such as cost of living or the size of the family that you support. So some one making $5,000 annually in say Nigeria could easily be living like a king, while some one making $44,016 in NYC, London, or Tokyo could be eating cat food and crackers just to get by. Anyway, I found this amusing and just thought i'd pass it along.
