We Are the World’s Richest 1%

Some debated whether Wall Street — and not corporate headquarters or even the White House — was the best place to protest �the 1%.�

As it turns out, you could have plopped your picket sign down just about anywhere in the country and been fine.

World Bank economist Branko Milanovic took a look at the world�s richest people in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots, and at least as of the most recent data available (2005), almost half the richest 1% live in the United States. The threshold: $34,000 per person in a household. Translation: If you got a job out of college with anything better than a philosophy degree, you�re living the global dream.

The rest of the world doesn�t come close. The richest 1% is made up of about 60 million people. The U.S. sits at 29 million, and Germany is a tarnished silver medal at just about 4 million. China, for all its recent economic advancement, doesn�t even register as a blip, grouped in with the rest of the horde under �others.� The chart below, created by CNNMoney, illustrates the country-by-country breakdown.

Milanovic�s telling statement refers to the respective view of the emerging global �middle class.� He says, �It doesn’t seem right to define as middle class, people who would be on food stamps in the United States.�

The U.S. certainly has its share of problems, and poverty and hunger shouldn�t be swept under the rug regardless of how much worse the rest of the world has it. Starving is starving. But the statistics should provide a humbling dose of perspective to those of us who do have stable jobs that put us in the �global 1%.� We should strive to be richer. We should strive to better ourselves. But before opening our mouths to gristle about a line at the bank or slow download speeds on our iPhones, it�s worth realizing how hollow such a gripe would ring elsewhere.