Poorest Americans Better off than Rest of World

The United States holds a disproportionate amount of the world’s rich people, and that’s not saying much because it only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world – family of four, for example, needs to make $136,000. Of course, in today’s economy, $34,000 gets the middle class next to nothing after income taxes. They’re living paycheck to paycheck unable to purchase healthy foods, with no health insurance, no job security, no chance of a quality education in the public system and limited prospects of living in a safe neighborhood.

According to calculations by World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots, 29 million of the world’s richest people (those making $34k or more) lived in the United States in 2005. That’s about half of the world’s wealthiest. Another four million reside in Germany and the rest are sprinkled throughout Europe and Latin America, with a few in Asia. None live in Africa, China or India despite those being some of the most resource rich areas of the world coveted most by Western Europeans and Americans.

If Milanovic’s figures can be believed, it demonstrates that the West’s spoken fiscal and political goals of developing the third world have been largely ineffective, or a “one-way street,” with wealth leaving emerging nations in greater proportion than flowing in. The result: a “wealth ghetto” has been created, concentrating assets in the hands of a select few Americans, Germans and their trusted helpers.

Mainstream media regularly feeds the West a diet of stories painting China and India as teaming with an ever-expanding middle class. But that middle class is apparently “still emerging.” “It doesn’t seem right to define as middle class, people who would be on food stamps in the United States,” Milanovic said. And that sentiment says nothing of Africa, where one American’s food stamps could likely save an entire village were it not in the crosshairs of a geopolitical battle of imperialist design.

The true global middle class falls far short of owning a home, having a car in a driveway, saving for retirement and sending their kids to college. As defined by median income, the true world middle class lives on just $1,225 a year, when adjusted to account for different costs of living across the globe. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world.