Where do the wealthiest 1% live?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30949796

by chestnut-tree • 11 years ago

58 51 11 years ago

bbc.co.uk

I think that a PPP adjustment is required here to produce a reasonable analysis. Or, excluding primary residence.

For the 0.1% or higher (whose wealth is sufficient for them to take advantage of globetrotting) absolute numbers might be important.

'The 1%' is not simply a matter of wealth; a person with $500K in the UK and in Nigeria are not really equivalent. The former is just a person who owns a normal home in the South East outright, the latter may well be in a position of power.

omh• 11 years ago

I think that a PPP adjustment is required here to produce a reasonable analysis

This article is in response to the recent Oxfam report which talked about the wealth of the global 1%. So in that context the absolute wealth, in the way that Oxfam measured it, is relevant.

semperfaux2• 11 years ago

Then perhaps a better response to the Oxfam report would be to at least attempt a more realistic measurement of wealth and present something similar with that addition/adjustment.

IanCal• 11 years ago

'The 1%' is not simply a matter of wealth; a person with $500K in the UK and in Nigeria are not really equivalent. The former is just a person who owns a normal home in the South East outright, the latter may well be in a position of power.

Isn't this just trying to correct for people using their wealth inefficiently?

wallflower• 11 years ago

From a Quora answer (can't post link because they, you know, suffer from login-o-rrhea.)

There's a quite famous post on Tianya community (one of the most prominent Chinese online community). There's a sub forum on Tianya specifically for people to showoff their wealth.

1) And one day, some guy start showing off his watches (IWC watch.)

2) Other people step in and start competing with him - more watches

3) Luxury cars (Lambos)

4) More Luxury cars, diamond rings

5) Then, things start to get interesting, some guy post this: Government approved mining permit. You ever heard about how Chinese coal mine owner could afford a dozen Hummers, private jets? Yeah...

6) And then, another guy post this, bank account with nearly 1 Billion Yuan (about 150 Million USD).

7) And the post got quiet for a bit until this guy show up, posting bunch of land ownership certificates (the little white note says: all fking go home!)

8) And the post got quiet for a long time, and then this guy step up and end the discussion once and for all:

It's an invitation to 中南海 ( Zhongnanhai ), and official envelopes of CPC ( Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China ).'

Here you have a very interesting social power structure of China:

Level 1: Luxury goods (Phones, Watches, Cars, jewelry)

Level 2: Possession of raw materials (mines, oil, steel...)

Level 3: possession of large amount of money

Level 4: possession of land.

Level 5: Access to the power core.

The guy might not even belong to core power, but the mere access to it, you have that kind of connection is valued more than any material wealth. There's your basic Chinese social structure in one sentence.

unknownian• 11 years ago

https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better

You can bypass the issue with a URL trick (?share=1)

titaniumdecoy• 11 years ago

Why not include that in the URL?

jknightco• 11 years ago

You can actually add any query-string and that will work. I'm a fan of adding "?fuck=you" in the hopes that it shows up in their logs somewhere.

peterjmag• 11 years ago

http://www.quora.com/What-does-the-social-pecking-order-look...

LiweiZ• 11 years ago

The closer you get to the power core, the more things you can get. Power is money. power > fiat money. I stopped browsing Tianya for a long time (around 2005/2006). There was another famous thread that is quite similar to this one but not as interesting as this one. Good to know this.

The information restriction and distortion imposed by the ruling party will simply destroy its own capability of processing information in the long run. Not a good thing for people live on the land. I wish it would not happen.

acadien2• 11 years ago

Anyone else shocked that China only has 1.6m relative to the world? Maybe this is because it doesn't take into account relative cost of living and cost of goods. I imagine a million USD goes a lot further in Shanghai than in SF.

blackguardx• 11 years ago

Shanghai is the most expensive city I have ever visited. Coming from San Francisco, most cities seem cheap. Not Shanghai.

acadien2• 11 years ago

Hm maybe it depends on your income level? I have friends in Shanghai that live on a fraction of what I live on in the US, we're in comparable income levels but no where near wealthy.

rsync• 11 years ago

Useless anecdote:

I have been to shanghai, and agree that it is not cheap.

However, other than special-case-outliers like Aspen and Davos, nowhere I have been is more expensive than Zurich.

It's like, crazy expensive.

KaoruAoiShiho• 11 years ago

China manipulates its currency so any number in dollars would be inaccurate. It probably has maybe 2-3 times the amount stated here. It's still a pretty poor country though per capita.

seanmcdirmid3• 11 years ago

Also, gray income is common, and how do you count bribes?

seanmcdirmid3• 11 years ago

I imagine a million USD goes a lot further in Shanghai than in SF.

And you would be surprised how much it doesn't. Costs in SH are high, and there are a lot of millionaires in the city even if that money is mostly gray.

Keep in mind that prices in China are lower at the low end, and higher at the high end. So ya, you can buy that cheap meal for cheaper, but if you want a BMW, you have to pay 2x/3x more. I do all my high-end shopping in the states when I go back once or twice a year (and I don't own a car).

DanBlake• 11 years ago

I would love to see a deeper level map for the US- being able to zoom in on cities/states would be cool

Spooky23• 11 years ago

There's a lot of cool stories hidden there. I know of one guy who is worth something like $100m. When he moved to a different town, he basically broke the school aid formula and had a dramatic impact on the schools revenue stream!

craigds• 11 years ago

Another map supporting the notion that New Zealand is a made up country. Submitted to http://worldmapswithout.nz/

gumby• 11 years ago

Another map supporting the notion that New Zealand is a made up country.

So true! I flew east for hours and never saw the place. My sister supposedly "moved" there, but then a year or so later I saw her -- in Australia!

Kim Dotcom is in trouble with the law. Allegedly he lives in this "New Zealand" place but what authorities are seizing his assets? USA.

There must be a evil cabal who has inserted this "country" into so-called "educational" materials as a way of controlling youth. They've even gone as far as creating a seat at the UN general assembly for them. And defaced the name of the AAC biscuit. Stop the conspiracy!

alexbecker2• 11 years ago

...they do know there are more than 4.7B people in the world, right?

pedrosorio• 11 years ago

It does not make sense to include minors in "wealth reports".

alexbecker2• 11 years ago

Ah, thanks.

georgeecollins• 11 years ago

I'm a bleeding heart liberal but every time I see this kind of analysis I get uncomfortable. Most middle aged peole who live in Claifornia west of the I5 and own a house probably have a net worth > $700k. I would guess most people who read this site will have a greater net worth before they are forty, if not sooner.

Are these rich people? If you live in Boston, New York or California you can have that net worth and just be getting by. It doesn't feel like you live a life of priveledge, or you have some kind of power over the world that other responsible employed adults don't have. It's hard to feel like that sort of wealth is really a social ill.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

Sure, you're "just getting by". But you are still wealthy- it is your wealth that lets you even hope to live there. If you were to cash out and move to Mexico, you'd practically be a shah.

Wealth isn't just access to servants and lavish meals, it's access to anything other people want but can't afford. A house in San Francisco is such a thing, even if it doesn't have carved ivory statues and a moat.

TTPrograms• 11 years ago

For most people, though, isn't living in that expensive environment a significant boost to their ability to earn at a level required to achieve that net worth? Not just San Fran, but any urban environment as opposed to, say, a rural environment.

This suggests possibly massive disruption in wealth structure once augmented reality puts remote interaction on par with local interaction. If your day-to-day expenses are significantly more decoupled from your income how will spending patterns in the top 5% change? Would luxury spending increase, or perhaps individuals would be able to invest more and retire earlier?

jdmichal• 11 years ago

Only the equity paid off on that $700k+ mortgage counts as net worth. How many of those people completely own their houses?

seanmcdirmid3• 11 years ago

If they bought during the 90s crash, that house probably only costed $200k, and the mortgage is probably mostly paid off. They really can't sell either to upgrade given the way property taxes work in California (they pay tax on $200k, a new buyer would pay tax on $700k).

ap22213• 11 years ago

Based on my experiences, if you live in the DC metro area and have a net worth of 10M, you're considered upper middle class.

nandemo• 11 years ago

Most middle aged peole who live in Claifornia west of the I5 and own a house probably have a net worth > $700k.

Well, yeah, there are lots of wealthy people in California. It seems like you're saying "it's so normal to be wealthy in California, so they aren't really wealthy". Sure, maybe you aren't relatively wealthy compared to your neighbours, but that doesn't change the fact that you're wealthier than 99% of the world.

you can have that net worth and just be getting by

Only if you define "just getting by" by "having a normal lifestyle compared to your peers". But then most of the people in any range will be "getting by", by definition, including the 0.1%.

There's no need to confuse

"these people are wealthy" (for some arbitrary but quite reasonable definition of "wealthy")

with

"these people are privileged" or "these people should feel guilty" (both of which involves all sorts of value judgement)

EGreg• 11 years ago

Well obviously the wealthiest 1% are exactly 1% so there are going to be a lot of them!

Did we really think there are tens of millions of Daddy Warbuckses?

semperfaux2• 11 years ago

My assumptions regarding where the term "the 1%" came from aside, it seems to me that it's fairly useless for exactly this reason. If you want to talk about people whose means significantly exceed the vast majority of others, a smaller proportion is almost certainly in order (without, as another comment mentions, a PPP adjustment or something similar).

arfliw• 11 years ago

Canada with 1.6 million is pretty surprising. That's roughly the same per capita as the US.

China with only 1.6 million is downright shocking. You read about new billionaires in that country all the time. I guess the wealth is only flowing into a very small number of hands.

desdiv• 11 years ago

I believe those Chinese billionaires are counted in the USA, UK, Canada columns due to most of their assets being hidden overseas.

They're partly the reason why the Canadian number is so high.

rubiquity• 11 years ago

Canada with 1.6 million is pretty surprising. That's roughly the same per capita as the US.

Home ownership, along with vacationing, is a core value of Canadian society. When you look at the average cost of a home (quite high) in Canada, along with this article defining "The 1%" as anyone with wealth of $798,000 or more, it's easy to see why there are so many Canadians.

wicknicks• 11 years ago

Germany with 2.8 million is equally interesting. The country's population is 80m. Atleast one in 35 people there is in the top 1%.

Gurkenmaster• 11 years ago

France has 3.5 million with an even smaller population of 66 million so one out of twenty. Even though it's not very stable from a financial perspective.

aragot• 11 years ago

And Russia? Not even on the map: 110 people own 35% of the wealth, more than $1bn each. http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-billionaire-wealth-inequ...

tomp2• 11 years ago

I don't get this article.

Obviously billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg are part of the 1%. But who else is? According to Credit Suisse, another 47m people

There are 7 billion people in this world. 1% of that is 70 million, not 47 million.

Never trust journalists writing about statistics (or anyone who hasn't studied statistics, they probably have no idea what they're talking about) (on second thought, don't trust people who have studied statistics either; they now enough to manipulate you).

jimminy• 11 years ago

The image and number comes from the Credit Suisse report[1]. Inside of it, they describe their methodology, which explains the discrepancy.

"More specifically, since children have little formal or actual wealth ownership, we focus on wealth ownership by adults, defined to be individuals aged 20 or above."

[1](page 5): https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...

tomp2• 11 years ago

Seems a rather important detail to omit.

level09• 11 years ago

The remaining must be residing in the oil-rich middle east gulf countries, royal families who usually never disclose their finances.

jqm• 11 years ago

Sounds like the group that is more of interest is the .01% or .001%. Love to see a map of that. Because nickle millionaires with $800,000 of home equity probably aren't the global movers and shakers.....

claypoolb• 11 years ago

This chart is deceiving - it does not contemplate the "age" of the wealth (see: compounding interest).

The graphic shows 4.9% of the 47MM regarded as "the 1%" live in Italy. Although I do not debate that the chart is factual, I will pose question to you, as a skeptic audience: have you done business in Italy within the last 100 years? Have you heard of your friends or your friends of friends doing business there?

Innovation prevails. Regardless of the rate of compounding interest.

tormeh• 11 years ago

You're all discussing this on a local scale. This is clearly about global upper-wealth distributions. That countries were used to group 1%ers was an arbitrary decision.

Where do the wealthiest 1% live?

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