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How quaint that $300 Million put you in the "top 100 richest Americans" in 1986. Today, #100 has $5 billion.
You'd need to adjust the numbers by inflation to make a fair comparison though.
It is still a fair comparison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd need to adjust the numbers by inflation to make a fair comparison though.
$350 million (the amount referenced in the article) in 1986 dollars is $760 million in 2015 dollars. [0] Still quite a bit less than $5 billion. [0] http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=19...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$300 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollars. Still seems like the rate of wealth of the richest 100 has exceeded inflation by 8X... Which is fine, just interesting.
I wouldn't say it's "fine". The well-documented increasing wealth-inequality is going to be a major problem to solve in the next century. As automation becomes more prevalent, it will only get worse with the money ultimately going to fewer and fewer hands.
Inequality itself is a function of the uncounted dimensions of comparison amongst humans. Wealth is just a proxy target for this underlying fact. Make wealth equal by the most gentle mechanisms imaginable and the dynamics will just shift to some other dimension. It's like whack-a-mole with abstract concepts we barely understand baked into our monkey brains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd need to adjust the numbers by inflation to make a fair comparison though.
Even that's not right, you need to compare to per capita GDP. $350 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollar, but per capita GDP was just $19.1k in 1986. So $750 million corresponded to 39.2k times the per capita GDP. Today per capita GDP is $54.6k, so $5 billion is 91.5k times that. Which means that the degree to which the 100th richest person is richer than the average is about 2.3x more than it was 30 year…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$300 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollars. Still seems like the rate of wealth of the richest 100 has exceeded inflation by 8X... Which is fine, just interesting.
I wouldn't say it's "fine". The well-documented increasing wealth-inequality is going to be a major problem to solve in the next century. As automation becomes more prevalent, it will only get worse with the money ultimately going to fewer and fewer hands.
I had never thought of poverty as something one could distribute, so that quote has stuck with me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$350 million (the amount referenced in the article) in 1986 dollars is $760 million in 2015 dollars. [0] Still quite a bit less than $5 billion. [0] http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=350.00&year1=19...
Wealth disparity is a lot worse now than it was in 1986. So you have to take that into account also.
[0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd need to adjust the numbers by inflation to make a fair comparison though.
Even that's not right, you need to compare to per capita GDP. $350 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollar, but per capita GDP was just $19.1k in 1986. So $750 million corresponded to 39.2k times the per capita GDP. Today per capita GDP is $54.6k, so $5 billion is 91.5k times that. Which means that the degree to which the 100th richest person is richer than the average is about 2.3x more than it was 30 year…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even that's not right, you need to compare to per capita GDP. $350 million in 1986 is $750 million in today's dollar, but per capita GDP was just $19.1k in 1986. So $750 million corresponded to 39.2k times the per capita GDP. Today per capita GDP is $54.6k, so $5 billion is 91.5k times that. Which means that the degree to which the 100th richest person is richer than the average is about 2.3x more than it was 30 year…
Why does GDP matter if you're calculating individual wealth and thus purchasing power? (Genuine question btw - not disagreeing just interested)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wealth disparity is a lot worse now than it was in 1986. So you have to take that into account also.
I think that's exactly what that shows. Real median income (2014 dollars) was 51,000 in 1986. Today, it's 53,000[0]. Wealth in the middle hasn't changed much, and all that GDP growth is being gobbled by the very top. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N