Interestingly, the "Maximum income" (USD/year) is 2,200,000,000 (2.2 billion). Specifying a yearly income of 2B/year, however, puts you at #1 according to this. Why 2.2B? Seems rather arbitrary.
Likely a 32bit int rounding issue? 2147483648
Global Rich List
31–40 of 55 posts
Re: Global Rich List
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the nuance of the issue is the difference between "give a man a fish" versus "teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime". There is a moral dilemma between spending money now to feed 100 people versus teaching one person to fish for a lifetime. That is a tough dilemma to solve. But different charities approach this in different ways. The philosophy behind Kiva is to help people build sustainable businesse…
I agree with you that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is one of the best charities out there however I'm stunned that they do not (openly) accept donations: Q. Does the foundation accept donations? A. From time to time, people generously offer to contribute money to the foundation. We prefer that people give directly to our grantee organizations rather than to the foundation if they want to help advance the cau…
I suppose it's a tax management tool for the Gates, besides being an excellent charity. I don't mean to take away at all from the good they do, but why else wouldn't they accept donations except to not muddy the tax waters?
Re: Global Rich List
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
"For currency conversion we use Purchasing Power Parity Dollars (PPP$) in order to take into account the difference in cost of living between countries; PPP$ are also less susceptible to short term fluctuations."
im no economist, but i cant help but feel thereis a huge flaw with PPP comparisons between first and third world countries. if someone made $0.08/hr in the US, they would starve. homeless people make a lot more than this in the states. but somehow, people manage to raise whole families on those wages in third world countries. what am i missing?
You're missing the forest for the trees. It's an awareness tool, not an economic analysis.
Re: Global Rich List
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's something I've pressed for here a lot at Kiva, showing how positive your impact is. Last year, we started rating our partners on "catalytic"-ness, which is somewhat of a proxy for impact, and now 33% of our loans are rated highly catalytic. There's some studies which have shown impact both of microfinance in general and some that include our specific partners, but in general not nearly enough studies. And I'm…
All I have to say is: thank you. Thank you to every single person involved with Kiva in any way. Every month I have an auto-deposit into my Kiva account, and I'm always excited to jump in and distribute the funds. The team I'm in ( http://www.kiva.org/team/nerdfighters ) is open to anyone and has themes where each month we fund women, people from specific nations, etc and work together to make sure that the recipient…
Nerdfighters are awesome, thanks for being a part! I actually built that auto-deposit feature during a 3 day all-nighter a while back, I couldn't believe we hadn't built it yet so I did it during one of our innovation iterations :)
Re: Global Rich List
#35I love it, what an effective message.
I think there is a bug in the form validation, if I put commas in my net worth, it gives me a completely different value than if I don't. Probably should intelligently strip out non numerals, or even reject non-numeral entries, since people of different nationalities use periods and commas differently.
Also, reading the methodology, very interesting, but I am intuiting it isn't so accurate. My net worth is higher vs average for U.S., and my income is lower vs average for U.S. but the site ranks me in the opposite direction when I change my entry values.
Re: Global Rich List
#36Great app. Too bad a 1 percenters like me can't calculate my apparent wealth however. Income works fine, but when I put in the data for wealth (no house, minimalistic materials, and meagre bank accounts) it gives me the error code: "Are you sure about that?"... Apparently, you cannot hold less than $1,500CAD of wealth, nor can you be classed within the bottom 22%. The income bottom limit is $400CAD, which is much bet…
You're not a 1%er if you have no assets.
Re: Global Rich List
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
im no economist, but i cant help but feel thereis a huge flaw with PPP comparisons between first and third world countries. if someone made $0.08/hr in the US, they would starve. homeless people make a lot more than this in the states. but somehow, people manage to raise whole families on those wages in third world countries. what am i missing?
You're missing the forest for the trees. It's an awareness tool, not an economic analysis.
the tool does count trees though. i find it relevant to discuss whether it counts 1e2 trees or 1e6, or a seemingly unsurvivable wage with one that in reality sustains families.
Re: Global Rich List
#38This is an interesting idea, but the numbers are bogus. It says 2% of the world (130M people) makes more than $25,000. This is, however, the median American personal income, so we know that at least 150M Americans make at least that much, plus all the people who do so elsewhere (probably at least another 150M, counting UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc, all the wealthier countries).
Re: Global Rich List
#39This is an interesting idea, but the numbers are bogus. It says 2% of the world (130M people) makes more than $25,000. This is, however, the median American personal income, so we know that at least 150M Americans make at least that much, plus all the people who do so elsewhere (probably at least another 150M, counting UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc, all the wealthier countries).
I don't think all Americans are in work ...
edit: Brief searching gives around 135 million Americans in work (this number maybe excluding farm work).
Re: Global Rich List
#40This is an interesting idea, but the numbers are bogus. It says 2% of the world (130M people) makes more than $25,000. This is, however, the median American personal income, so we know that at least 150M Americans make at least that much, plus all the people who do so elsewhere (probably at least another 150M, counting UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc, all the wealthier countries).
(For better statistics see gapminder.org, it's quite fascinating)