People selectively underestimate how rich the world's richest people are, according to a study. Increasing income inequality in many countries is driven by steep gains among the top 1% of earners. In the United States, support for policies that would redistribute wealth has not increased since the 1970s, even as the share of incomes held by the top 1% of Americans jumped from 10% to 19%.
    • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      2 months ago

      If you take a million dollars away from someone with a million dollars, they would be broke. If you took a million dollars away from a billionaire, they would basically still be a billionaire.

  • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
    15·
    2 months ago

    I just spent a few days visiting the French Riviera during my vacation.

    Yeah we do overestimate underestimate the income of the top 1%. The amount of absurd wealth these people have is gross.

    Edit: thank you stranger for the word

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    10·
    2 months ago

    I learned a perspective trick whenever I ridicule a price I see for something like quality clothes and such. For every additional digit in your income, remove a digit from the cost of something. Most of us are at 5 digits, and we prefer sales because 100 dollars for a pair of jeans is way too much while 10 dollars isn’t. To a 6 digit earner, the base price of affordable.

    Now think of someone who earns 7 digits as year, to them a 1000 dollar piece of clothing is reasonable. To the 8 digit, a 10000 dollar piece of clothing is reasonable. If you make a billion dollars a year? A pair of jeans worth 1 million dollars is reasonable.

    It’s just a thought experiment but it helps me better understand why gacha whales exist, why people buy million dollar cars, etc… It’s also just so far removed from the rest of society that it’d be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

  • Subtracty@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 months ago

    Their money makes money. If you have enough of a surplus in your income to save money or invest then you are accumulating money faster than the rest of us, and we will likely never catch up.

    • Professorozone@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 months ago

      Or to quantify it further. If someone has $20m, but no job. Is this person in the top 1%? I think so, but it is conceivable that this person lives very frugally in order to pass that on to his children or something.

      Also, I think people like to say the top 1%, when they really mean the top 0.1%. I believe the top 1% income or savings, however it is defined, is a lot lower than most think. I believe when most people refer to this colloquially, they really mean billionaires.

      • ifItWasUpToMe@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        If you have $20m you are EASILY making 500k/year in interest/dividends/investment growth. You’d have to try pretty hard to not grow your $20m.

        • Professorozone@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          The point was, how is top 1% determined? Some people have high income and spend it all, others are good savers but don’t have a high income. Or is it based on net worth? I realize this may sound ridiculous, but as I mentioned, I believe 1% is a lower bar than people think it is.

          • ifItWasUpToMe@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            To me net worth makes the most sense. I do agree 1% isn’t as high as people think. When people talk about the 1% they are probably thinking more about the top 0.1% or even 0.01%.

            Looking just at the states with ~330 million people that would be 3.3 million 1%ers. Tons of people who never made huge salaries, but are great at saving and investing will be in that category.