Wealth Inequality

 Wealth Inequality

A recent Robert Reich quote: “The next time someone tells you wealth inequality isn’t a problem, hit them with this fact. If the world’s ten richest men lost 99.999% of their wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of the global population.”

Robert Reich terms this a “fact”. Let’s put numbers to this. References for my research are shown below.

The Forbes list of the worlds' ten wealthiest people in 2022 adds up to a total wealth for these ten individuals of $1.455 trillion ($1,455,000,000,000). The world’s population now, according to the World-o-meter is 7.927 billion people (7,927,000,000).

Losing 99.999% of their wealth would leave the above ten wealthiest individuals with 0.001%, or a total of $14,550,000. Reich is stating as a fact that this is more wealth than held by 99% of the world’s population, or 7.847,730,000 people. This would amount to less than a cent per person (actually, $0.000185 per person).

If he means that these ten people, and their remaining 0.001%, or $14,550,000 is more than any other ten people have out of the remaining billions of people, I would like to see the data. If he refers to individual people in the remaining 0.001%, I would also like to see the data.

Reich calls himself a Keynesian economist, whereas he is only an economist by partial education. Reich, and other left-wing commentators like Paul Krugman, who have achieved considerable fame, throw statements like the above around to a gullible audience that don’t stop to analyze what they are saying. Many times, these pronouncements are misleading, and only feed a left-wing narrative.

My references:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/09/10/robert-reichs-f-minus-in-economics-false-facts-false-theories/?sh=39d2b0e5507a

https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#3f98ad693d78

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#:~:text=World%20Population%20Clock%3A%207.9%20Billion%20People%20(2022)%20%2D%20Worldometer

Ray Gruszecki

February 21, 2022