Interesting factoid

[catsittingstill]

I was reading a New York Times article: "End of an Era on Wall Street."

About halfway down the first page, I found an interesting little paragraph:

Over all, the past quarter-century has redefined the notion of wealth. In 1982, the first year of the Forbes 400 list, it took about $159 million in today’s dollars to make the list; this year, the minimum price of entry was $1.3 billion.

 So the 400th richest person in the US has nearly 9 times as much money now as the 400th richest person in the US did 20 years ago.  In real terms, not counting inflation.

Wow.

I wonder what the difference is, in practical terms of everyday comfort and security, between having 159 million dollars and having almost nine times that much.  Is it really different?  Or is it mostly the same? 

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I think the difference becomes the scale at which you can play with your pet theories about how the world should be run.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Whee! I have eleventy godzillion dollars! I'm going to buy my own Micronesian country and run it as my own experimental sea monkey farm!

That is what ultimate freedom is.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Good point :-)

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

159 million dollars? If I had $159 I wouldn't make the forbes list? If I'm reading this right it means that there are 400 Americans with $1.3 billion or more. I wonder what the Canadian equivalent would be.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I ran a Google search for '400 richest Canadians' and it said, "No results found for '400 richest Canadians'". So, I guess that's your answer. :-)

The best I could do was a top 100 from 2007 by Canadian Business Magazine. At spot #100, the value was $445 million.

(Though, I'm also not sure the 'normal' Forbes list is limited to the U.S.A.)

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

The richest Canadian is happy to have a pretty good truck with a not-too-bad transmission, and enough energy to heat his spacious home in Alberta. Comfort, eh?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Maybe the richest Canadian has a plentitude of family and friends to love and be loved by, and enough money not to have to worry about it :-)

It's all in how we define rich.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, 445 million is quite respectable, really :-)

[billroper]

In practical terms, I'm sure it doesn't matter.

In the thoroughly impractical sense, it has a lot of influence over the kind of toys that you're allowed to play with. If you want to buy the Chicago Cubs, you'd better have a spare billion dollars or so sitting around.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Somehow I always think of the Cubs as being a national monument, like the Statue of Liberty.

I hadn't thought of them as something someone could own before. Though I've heard of other teams having owners, come to think of it, so no reason why not.

[billroper]

The Wrigley family owned the Cubs for a very long time. They sold out in 1981 to the Tribune Company which owns WGN, the TV station that made its national reputation by broadcasting Cubs games. Now that the Tribune Company has gone through a leveraged buyout led by Sam Zell, the Cubs are an excellent thing to sell to raise cash to reduce debt, since that doesn't affect the core business. (WGN shows a lot fewer Cubs games now, since it's a flagship of the CW network.)

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

Now there's an idea...start selling licensing rights to other property to reduce debt, just the way it happens for sports facilities.

SkyDome -> The Rogers Centre
Candlestick Park -> 3Com Park, Monster Park
Statue of Liberty -> Bic Lady (Hey, it's even French!)

* /me hides *

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I think the difference is the size of the gap between these super-rich people and wage earners -- and the size of the population below the poverty level.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I have to admit it's kind of disturbing.

[durconnell.livejournal.com]

In what we think of as practical terms, not much. They may think differently. It also helps to remember that "rich" isn't a monolithic block, even though it may seem so to the definitively non-rich.

The 95th percentile income level in 2006 is about $148,000 a year. That person we would probably consider to have a good income (better than 94% of his or her fellows), but still arguably middle class. The 99.9th percentile is making about $1.9 million a year. From the perspective of someone making $50,000 a year, both may seem rich, but the 95% has roughly 3x the 50K person and the 99.9% has roughly 38x the 50K person. Interestingly, the difference between real wealth and well off is much greater than the difference between well off and the 50K guy.

And that is only considering the 99.9%. If you take it out to 99.99%, the threshold income is app $10.4 million a year, or roughly 204 times that of $50K guy or 70 times that of the well off, and over 5 times that of the merely rich at the 99.9th percentile.

http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/saez/TabFig2006.xls

So the rich are not merely different, they also seem to inhabit a different country than the rest of us. See the book Richistan for more examples of the difference.

http://www.amazon.com/Richistan-Journey-Through-American-Wealth/dp/0307341453/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223333193&sr=8-1

Even though I can understand intellectually where they are coming from, I still find it difficult to muster much sympathy for a person suffering the trauma of having to sell their private jet.


Donald Clarke

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Odds are, the fifth richest person in America is seething with rage and ambition over being only fifth richest.

People different from us.

Me, I wouldn't mind being able to pay my wife's medical bills without taking from the retirement fund. Heck, let me be the 1001th richest, and I wouldn't even bother to look up who's number 1000 and plot to kill her. I'm such a lazy slacker!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

but you're our lazy slacker. :-)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links.

To me, "rich" seems monolithic, but I can see how that might not be the case for the tiny percentage of people who actually *are* rich.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to know how many of the people on the first Forbes list gained capital and remain on the current list, if any. Did people like Oprah and Bill Gates bump them off entirely, or did they invest and get richer, or become ginchy Wall Street bankers with golden parachutes?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Good questions.

I kind of wonder what the recent stock market slumps have done to the average income level among the 400 richest.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

That kind of wealth translates into the ability to shape the world in many ways. For instance, Paul Allen funded the Rose Garden Arena, considerably messing up Portland traffic. See also. (Richistan, one more book I ought to read, probably long after I finish Lavinia.)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I used to ride the MAXX past the Rose Garden as they were finishing it. I remember when it just said "Rose Garde" on it. Which I thought was a very poetic name; I was disappointed when they added the "n" the next day.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Sigh.

Allen also gave Seattle the EMP, which is not a popular building, though I rather like it.