How rich are you? - not what you think

My first thought is "That can't be right -- I'm in the top 0.39%. Think they musta got their maths wrong." Guess that's their point though. Pretty sobering.
 
Remember that in many poorer countries people earn less than £1 an hour, so it is hardly surprising. Out of the 200+ countries where (UK) are in the G8, i.e the top 8 richest countries in the world, my CD player is enough to feed a poor family for a year, but if we all felt thought like that we would never to anything.

I.e don't very guilty about wealth its not our fault we were not born in a poor country, I am drunk,
 
The problem with this whole "This person lives on $2 a week" is that the cost of living is nothing like as high in other parts of the world. A metric needs to be created that comes out with a number which takes into account income, living costs, cost of land, taxes, etc. Yes, such a metric will always be flawed because you can't take everything into account numerically, but it would be less flawed than a simple $ income. And yes, I'm also sure that we'd still be at the top and are fortunate in that.
 
imho there is a whole lot of confusion between 'quantity of money' and 'quality of life' at the moment. once you get the 2 clear in your mind things become a lot simpler.
cheers


julian
 
Exactly. There comes a point where you are comfortable (own house, car, whatever else you might think you need) and beyond that there isn't a lot more happiness to be had out of money.
 
isaac,
quite, you get to the point where money is no longer the main motivating factor in your life - even if you aren;t mick rich. unfortunately with the media pushing 'bigger, better, faster, MORE' down your throat 24/7 it's difficult to metaphorically sort the wheat from the chaff.
cheers


julian
 
Whilst I agree that cost of living is a lot lower in a lot of other countries, but the standard of living is also a lot lower. Also, with regard to the "quanity" argument. We only have the quanity because they don't. At the end of the day our wealth is founded on the labour of the rest of the world. That is an undeniable fact. I'm not saying we should all hang our heads in shame and guilt over this fact, but we should all at least acknowlege just how lucky we are by virtue of where we were born.

GTM
 
julian2002 said:
isaac,
quite, you get to the point where money is no longer the main motivating factor in your life - even if you aren;t mick rich. unfortunately with the media pushing 'bigger, better, faster, MORE' down your throat 24/7 it's difficult to metaphorically sort the wheat from the chaff.
cheers


julian
Click to expand...

This is exactly what Maslow said, in a western world money is not the primate motivation factor once you have shelter, food and a bit of money for luxeries.

In terms of quality of live I am sure most of us here have a much better quality of life than most people in the world. At least we know we can easily access food and if the worst comes to the worst the government will make sure we are not homeless.
 
Even more sobering is to remember that, not only are we among the richest people on earth, but also among the richest people that have ever walked the planet. On that measure, we'd be even higher up the tree.
 
GTM said:
...but the standard of living is also a lot lower. Also, with regard to the "quanity" argument. GTM
Click to expand...
True, but the *quality* of life is not necesasarily lower. I have lived in places where I earned the same in a month as I now do in an hour, but I *much* preferred the lifestyle.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top