Guess the only thing that's changed is inflation.
There are interesting aspects to the data, but they overstate what the numbers they present tell us about inequality.
If a billionaire has similar health care, eats similar food and buys similar phones, then in reality they are actually quite similar to the poor.
A good measure of prosperity is quality of life, which sadly in our wonderful civilization one needs to buy with money.
And a little note. Billionaires do not eat the same food, do not take the same healthcare, and do not buy similar consumer goods for the most part. Maybe they will get the iPhone, but if you think a poor person can afford an iPhone maybe you also don't really understand what it is to be poor.
Poor people fighting hungerpains working their shit jobs. Poor people suffer from mental ailments induced by the stresses of being poor.
There is no parallel.
>A good measure of prosperity is quality of life, which sadly in our wonderful civilization one needs to buy with money.
how do you propose measuring quality of life? by how the billionaire spends money right? that's exactly what they have done here.
The key issue is that money often translates to such things as power and leisure. Prosperity is not consumption - it is the command over power, resources and time.
The poor have to sell their time in order to afford the basic necessities of life; the rich don't have to. So the rich have a lot more free time than the poor and the resources to use it well. The rich simply are freer than the poor, who are not unlike prisoners with no claim over their time.
The rich also get to influence policies to a far greater extent than the poor. In a way, wealth is just stored influence. This in turn helps them perpetuate their privilege. For instance, they can fund narratives that normalize inequality and lobby for lower taxes.
The lives of the rich are also far more secure than the lives of the poor. Many poor people are one major life crisis away from penury. This significantly affects the quality of their lives. Access to more wealth would mitigate this.
One could also flip your argument as follows: wealth is a scarce resource. If the rich already have everything they need to live a happy life at low amounts of wealth, then letting them horde more wealth than necessary is unjustified. Instead, that should be distributed to those in need. This would make no difference to the well-being of the wealthy, but it would help others who need resources more.
I agree with you on this.
>The poor have to sell their time in order to afford the basic necessities of life; the rich don't have to. So the rich have a lot more free time than the poor and the resources to use it well. The rich simply are freer than the poor, who are not unlike prisoners with no claim over their time.
In general, I don't agree at all. Rich are "freer" but they definitely don't work fewer hours than poor on average. In USA the Rich became rich mostly by working.
https://www.ubs.com/us/en/wealth-management/our-solutions/pr...
Over 75% are self made billionaires and for sure these people work more than twice as hard as normal people. The others do normal jobs and I can't really find examples of non self made billionaires slacking off.
https://fortune.com/2018/06/18/ceos-should-prioritize-time-m...
>On average, the CEOs participating in the study worked 9.7 hours per weekday and 62.5 hours per week. They also worked on the majority of their days off, on average 3.9 hours on weekend days and 2.4 hours on vacation days.
Poor people don't work as hard for many reasons
1. they don't want to 2. they don't have the opportunity to 3. they don't have the health
But that also does not mean that billionaires have more free time. It's usually not the case, simply because they are more invested in their ventures.
>The rich also get to influence policies to a far greater extent than the poor. In a way, wealth is just stored influence.
I agree but this is a caveat against the fact that the rich and the poor consume equally. Sure they can influence, but at the end of the day they consume the same which is more important for sustenance. Power and influence come higher in the hierarchy.
>The lives of the rich are also far more secure than the lives of the poor. Many poor people are one major life crisis away from penury. This significantly affects the quality of their lives. Access to more wealth would mitigate this.
Agreed.
>One could also flip your argument as follows: wealth is a scarce resource. If the rich already have everything they need to live a happy life at low amounts of wealth, then letting them horde more wealth than necessary is unjustified. Instead, that should be distributed to those in need. This would make no difference to the well-being of the wealthy, but it would help others who need resources more.
This buys into zero sum ideology of wealth. It is incorrect, misguided and a big mistake to think like this.
Dont forget about inherited privileges. If work was the primary driver of wealth, we'd see a much more even distribution. I suspect the eager CEOs either want to inflate their contribution (i know plenty who dont) or actually work more because it is their earning and not just salary plus maybe arbitrary bonus.
CEOs and billionaires are different groups. Those willing to take part in a study are not a random sample. Its a sample sample too. The numbers depend on self reporting.
You are buying into the myth of wealth going to those who create it. Most wealth is accumulated by being on the right end of transfers,and pricing power.
How are you concluding that? The only way I can see that could be true is if the bottom 50% has shifted their meagre savings to spending in an effort to stay afloat.
I find this to be dubious because the bottom 50% was never saving much at all in the first place. For context, the median income across planet earth is $850 USD _per year._ There's not a lot of room at the bottom for savings.
https://www.pew.org/en/trust/archive/fall-2024/the-state-of-...
this is not what your article claims
?
"Lies, damn lies, statistics."
In 1970 1 oz of gold was ~$35 (by statute); today gold is $5,100; a few years ago it was well under two thousand dollarydoos.
Almost everybody is broke. A better way to look at this is to realize that 2025 was the highest year of spending by the Top [whatever-percentage] of consumers. The US fiat dollar's superior global position is waning, and this'll rot all economies & classes.
We're literally watching the final steps of "Trickle Down Economics" — where the wealth falls up [first slowly, then fast]. Add in some thinking machines — and it's just 21st century "slavery... with extra steps" (–R&M)
Yesterday among the poorest of neighbors said to me "I'm just trying to live a simple middle class life" — and I chuckled (rudely)... then responded "I'm among the wealthier people living on this street, and I'm not even middle class anymore — and we both still rent."
We're two tenants literally scrubbing out a former smoker tenant's filth, for rent credit, so that the next working class tenant can pay this distant slumlord more Rent. Yeah, we're rich... /s
andsoitis•1h ago
…Spending inequality within countries can tell a different story. Some rich countries became more unequal in the late 20th century even as global inequality fell. In the past decade the richest 10% have pulled away from the poorest 50% in Japan, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden.
throwawayqqq11•38m ago
Real economists would consider separating statistical outliers like china.
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03057...
> Without China and India, global interpersonal income inequality in 143 countries was higher in 2015 than in 1988.
> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/23/china-us-pov...
> The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.
> https://wir2022.wid.world/executive-summary/
> Income and wealth inequalities have been on the rise nearly everywhere since the 1980s, following a series of deregulation and liberalization programs which took different forms in different countries. The rise has not been uniform: certain countries have experienced spectacular increases in inequality (including the US, Russia and India) while others (European countries and China) have experienced relatively smaller rises.
This article is deceitful. I dont understand why you get downvotes.