Rich vs Poor: The Widening Gap

You’ve probably heard the saying “the rich get richer”. A report on the website of Canadian TV broadcaster CBC says that 1% of the world’s population owns 40% of the total household wealth. On the other end of the scale, 50% of the world’s population only collectively owns less than 1% of the world’s wealth. That’s a gap that’s been increasing for 2-3 decades. There’s more. Another 1% of the world’s population owns 10% of the wealth. So 50% of the world’s wealth is owned by 2% of the world.

The good news, at least for the average Internet user reading this, is that it only takes US$500,000 in assets to be included in the top 1%, and US$61,000 in (investable) assets to be in the top 10%. And 90% of the wealthiest adults are in North America.

There’s no point in talking about why that is, as its purely historical and partly sustained by the size of the population. The question is, what does that mean for anyone outside of North America? My feeling is that the Internet is levelling the playing field. Internet millionaires (and billionaires) are becoming coming more common, and they can be from anywhere. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.