The Wealth Food Chain
A rough thought exercise in understanding relational wealth:
The average poor citizen of the Third World earns $730 per year.
Working poor Americans make about $16,000 per year, or could eat almost 22 third-worlders (although you wouldn’t know it from life-expectancy).
Middle class Americans make about $57,000, eating about 3.5 working poor, or 78 third-worlders.
Upper class Americans make about $500,000, eating almost 9 middle-class, or 31 working poor, or 685 third-worlders.
Bill Gates is worth about $58,000,000,000, eating about 116,000 upper-class citizens, or a little more than a million middle-class, or 3.6 million working poor, or 79.45 million third-worlders.
John D. Rockefeller, at his height, adjusted for 2007 dollars, was worth over $318,000,000,000, eating 5.5 Bill Gates, or 636,000 upper-class Americans, or 5.58 million middle-class, or 19.88 million working poor, or 435.6 million third-worlders.
That’s a lot of tasty tasty third-worlders.