by KaiserJeep » Sat 03 Dec 2016, 16:46:23
I believe your figures, too. I think the difference is that I gave "per capita" figures, since not everyone is an actual wage earner.
However, the point that I was trying to make is that many more people than you think - 740,000,000 - are in that 10%, since we just blew through the 7.4B total population milestone within the past month.
Most of us in the world's top 10% are not wealthy in the societies we live in. I for example am feeling the pinch of no longer having a (barely) six figure income. Just the wife's salary is kinda tight for living in the Silicon Valley. She is driving a 15-year old SUV with several things broke on it we have decided are not worth fixing as the repairs would exceed the value of the vehicle. Mine is only 13 years old, and in better shape. We eat pretty well, but no longer can afford the 100% organic diet we had when I was working. Nor could we afford to live here in Silly Valley if we had to pay a mortgage.
But in Belize, or in Baja California, or in any of a dozen less developed places, our income would allow us to live very comfortably. Even our SS and other retirement incomes would do that. In those places, an annual $18,000 income would put a family of four comfortably in the Middle Class.
Unfortunately, the wife and I are retiring in Wisconsin, full of Democrats who are ready and even eager to take most of your retirement income in taxes, and spend it on things that benefit - almost exclusively - other people. We won't have much income, but they will tax real estate and personal property and many other things.
It so happens that I in particular have taken pains to reduce my carbon emissions. I feel comfortable that I have reduced them to 25% or less relative to the average American - and am scheming to reduce them even more following the wife's retirement and our relocation to the MidWest.
The statement that 10% of the richest produce 50% of the carbon emissions is simply not a useful or particularly informative one. I would say that - if they cared enough to actually take action - the wealthiest 10% could reduce their carbon emissions to 15% of the present total, down from 50%. The total carbon emissions would be 1/3rd lower than it is today, a useful improvement.
That would be the productive and positive way to express the concept. The original statement smacks of elite bashing - and neither you nor me consider ourselves among the elites, is my guess.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0