The free market economy is supposed to create wealth most efficiently and it really does so all over the world. But one important thing it does not do is the equitable distribution of wealth. A growing economy throws up many millionaires and billionaires but the distribution of the wealth created by a growing economy generally gets distorted and is skewed strongly in favor of the rich. The rich keep getting richer and wealthy and only few graduate from the middle class to the rich category. The Occupy Wall Streeters have been highlighting. The statistics don’t sound good. There is a new statistics that should be highlighted by Occupy Wall Streeters. The world’s millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5% of the world’s wealth. And to understand this fact in the right perspective, it must be pointed out that the rich would probably not even make one percent of the entire population of the world. This startling information has come out in the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse.
This is not the end of the story. It has now become a disturbing trend. The hold of the rich on the global wealth has increased. Just a year ago they controlled only 35.6% of the global wealth. The report from Credit Suisse says that there are 29.7 million people in the world with household net worth of $1 million. Taken together, they control about $89 trillion of the world’s wealth. In just one year their collective wealth has gone up by about $20 trillion. The rate of growth of the wealth of millionaires and billionaires is almost twice as fast as the world as a whole. The wealth of the millionaires grew 29% to hit the $89 trillion mark out of the total global wealth of $ 231 trillion. This inequitable distribution has the communist government in China worried. They don’t want to face the resentment of the masses which is bound to develop if this trend continues. Over the last eighteen months US has generated the maximum amount of wealth. It has added $4.6 trillion to global wealth. China which is the fastest growing economy is closing the gap with the American economy and it added $4 trillion. It was followed closely by Japan with $3.8 billion. Brazil and Australia were the other major contributors with $1.87 trillion and $1.85 trillion respectively.
The super rich of this world don’t even add up to a 3,000 in numbers. There are now 2,700 people in the world who are worth $500 million or more. These are the really rich people with the US hosting a majority of them. There are 29,000 people in the world who are worth $100 million or more and 84,700 people who are worth $50 million or more and 35,400 of them live and work in the U.S. In the immediate and midterm, the fastest growing economies in the world will be China, India and Brazil. The wealth of these economies will grow very rapidly and the estimated wealth of these countries by the year 2016 is going to be $39 trillion$8.9 trillion and $9.2 trillion respectively.
Via: blogs.wsj
