Charts That Defined the Global Economy in 2014

I history has taught us anything, it's that there will always be a 0.1% gaining disproportionally more than the majority, and you can't prevent that -- the only thing you can achieve by forcefully dispossessing them would be shifting the disproportion to some other group. The efforts are much better spent on increasing the well-being of the majority, through education and distribution of wealth on the lower levels. It's not a zero-sum game.

UPDATE: To be fair, I wrote the above comment before seeing the graph in question. But, after actually seeing it, I have realized that my comment is even more valid -- please note what has tipped the scales towards lowering the share of the 0.1%, in both cases where it happened on the graph? I would argue that the reason for that was not that the minority (whoever they were at the time) lost their wealth; rather, after the world wars the economy boosted everywhere and the majority's wealth increased overall, increasing its share.

Another way to read this chard is that we can expect another global war in upcoming years, and I sincerely hope that will not happen. I lived through one war already and certainly don't want to see another...

education is still really valuable, if one chooses the right field.

Employment rates and salaries for geologists, metallurgical engineers, pharmacists, one can go from poverty to well off in the span of a single generation with the right college degree.

That isn't to say there is no problem. I doubt that history will look at this disparity kindly. Perhaps better education about education, and what options and powers are available to us in general, would be wise.

"Sad that the rich gain much", not "sad that the poor gain little"... "the rich shouldn't be allowed to enjoy so much."

Oh well. In the USSR we had a joke about XX century revolutionaries' dream of there being no rich, contrasted to earlier revolutionaries' dream of there being no poor.

The chart shows percentages of wealth, not wealth, under the title "the poor are getting poorer." I guess you making a billion and me making a million in a joint venture should be considered my financial ruin.

Some caveats on that Saez wealth-inequality chart:

First, of course, is that it's missing almost 10% of the households and 50% of the wealth.

Second, what a typical "household" in the U.S. is has changed substantially since the halcyon days of 1979. They're smaller, and they have more old people and fewer young people[1]. Unsurprisingly, wealth disparities are amplified with age: A young doctor loaded with debt is probably much poorer in "real" net worth terms than his groundskeeper neighbor. But as an old doctor he will be much wealthier. Similar math applies as households are increasingly headed by singles as opposed to couples. Regardless of whether society is getting more or less equitable in "wealth distribution" for the average Joe, these demographic changes would show up as movement in this chart.

Third, I suspect that Saez did not account for the value (admittedly subject to the whims of Congress) of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Their political stability is at least as reliable as the stock market, and again, as society ages, more usable "wealth" is tied to them.

Finally, a massively lower interest rate environment (look up rates in the '70's!) makes it much more attractive for the bottom 90% to use credit for day-to-day living rather than keeping large cash buffers around. The same logic applies on a grander scale with housing and education: Even post-financial crisis, the "90%" can afford to leverage themselves much more dramatically than in 1979. That's more debt and lower wealth today, but presuming they can deleverage over time (as households did post '08), there's no reason to assume it must be a deep problem of inequality.

[1] http://web.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgi-bin/siepr/?q=system/...