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After the great recession of 2007-2008, and with the job market barely recovering, you’d think things were hard all over – but they’re not. Things are only hard for the poor: the rich have grown much richer in the process, as a new study put out by Credit Suisse’s global Wealth Report made visible. Over the last year, global wealth grew 4.9 percent, to its highest yet of $241 trillion, with U.S. gaining 72 percent of that. What this amounts to is that our 400 wealthiest people own more than the bottom half of the country combined.
This chart show how the U.S., more than all other countries, and by a considerable gap, produces many wealthy individuals, including, of course, Bill Gates, who is once again the richest man in the world.
(chart from page 25 of Suisse’s report)
Credit Suisse’s annual Global Wealth Report also indicted that for the fifth successive year, personal wealth has risen in the U.S., though concurrently there has been a shift in dynamics, with more of the middle class being demoted to lower class, after job losses and so forth.
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The charts also showed that the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population own 86 percent of global wealth, with only 1 percent of the wealth owned by the bottom half of adults. Whether such wealth disparity is fair for the world or not depends in part on your economic philosophy. It is notable to point out though that de Tocqueville, the early historian on American history, claimed our country’s principles were possible because all men really were more or less “created equal” with the rich and the poor being not too different. Things have changed quite a bit since then.
Yet with the United States gaining the majority of the freshly minted millionaires this last year, which has risen worldwide to nearly two-million, another American value comes into play: the American Dream of being a self made man. With the Suisse’s report predicting the world will see its first 11 trillionaires within a couple generations, American will probably have a few of them as well.
