Sherri

“Another billion people have more than $10,000 but less than $100,000; they own about $45 trillion among them. The remaining 3.2 billion adults have only $6.2 trillion, less than $2,000 each on average. Many of them have much less than that average. Very roughly speaking, the richest half a billion people have most of the money in the world, and the next billion have the rest. The handful of eighty-five staggeringly wealthy super-billionaires are still just a handful, so they own less than 1 percent of this total.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Four hundred thirty-six million people, with more than $100,000 but less than a million, collectively own another $125 trillion. Nearly 10 percent of the world’s adult population are in this second group. Those two groups, collectively, have most of the cash.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“wonderfully clarifying. Looking at the Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse, the source of Oxfam’s claims, we can play with some of those numbers to shed more light on the topic.[*] Forty-two million people have more than a million dollars each, collectively owning about $142 trillion. A few of them are billionaires, but most are not. If you have a nice house with no mortgage in a place such as London, New York, or Tokyo, that might easily be enough to put you in this group. So would the right to a good private pension.[*] [19] Nearly 1 percent of the world’s adult population are in this group.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths for the by-ways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought among our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast; A Personal Narrative (1911): WITH A SUPPLEMENT BY THE AUTHOR AND INTRODUCTION AND ADDITIONAL CHAPTER BY HIS SON