Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-10-07)

Data: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2018 for worth numbers -2 through 8. Bloomberg Billionaires Index for 9-11. Federal Reserve, Bloomberg Reporting, Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Go to businessweek.com for a complete version of the table.

–2 through 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11

Yournumber Bottomof

your bracket

Howin the world are in manyadults Who

your bracket

1.5b

1.7b

1.3b

436m

40m

1.7m

49,000

2,700

150

2

1 ¢ to $100

$1,000

$10,000

$100,000

$1m

$10m

$100m

$1b

$10b

$100b

Subsistence farmer

Median renter

Median family with nocollege education

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(in a year or two)

Boris Johnson

Ginni Rometty

Rex Tillerson

Silvio Berlusconi

Elon Musk

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Really, just those two.

72

ILLUSTRATION

BY

GEORGE

WYLESOL

Bloomberg

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October

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2019

(ISSN

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Theworldneedsa moreprecisewaytodescribewealth.

“Millionaire”is toobroad,coveringeveryonefromran-

dompikerswitha scant$1millioninnetworthalltheway

uptopeoplejustshyofbillionairestatus.“Billionaire”

hasthesameproblem.There’sa hugedifferencebetween

yourlocalanonymousrichpersonwhojustclearsthe

$1billionmarkand,say,JeffBezosorBillGates.Thelan-

guagedownthescaleofwealthis evenmoreimpoverished.

“Thousandaire”isn’tevenanacceptedword.

Wehavea solution.It’sa scaleofnetworthbasedon

scientificnotation,orpowersof10.Aswiththeseismic

scaleforearthquakes,it squeezesa lotofvariationintoa

compactsetofnumbers.Thepoorestofthepoor,at–2,are

only 13 unitsawayfromtherichestoftherich,the11swho

have unimaginablewealthandpower.

The numbers ofpeopleineachgroupareroughesti-

mates. Bloomberg calculates there are more than 2,800

adult billionaires (Nos. 9-11, combined) in the world, while

CreditSuisseestimatesthereareabout1,600.CreditSuisse

Groupdoesn’tbreakthingsdownfornumbersbelow3,

simplyestimatingthatabout1.5billion adults worldwide

have net worth less than $1,000. It’s best to view the num-

bers as ballpark figures subject to change. The academics

who put together the World Inequality Report 2018 edition

write that “available data sources make it impossible at this

stage to properly estimate the level and evolution of the

global distribution of wealth.” The purchasing power fig-

ures are likewise intended to be illustrative, not hard data.

It’s a bit appalling that disparities in wealth have gotten

so big that we need logarithms to describe them. But that’s

the world we live in. <BW> �With Tom Maloney

◼ LAST THING

● METHOD

Onemillionis 10to

thesixthpower,so

a basicmillionaire

is a 6 onourscale.

Someonewith$1 is

a zero.Anyonewith

liabilitiesexceeding

assetsis undefined

onthisscale,

becausethere’s

nosuchthingas

a logarithmofa

negativenumber.

Butforsimplicity,

wethrowtheminto

–2,whichis for

peoplewith1¢to 9¢

ofnetworth.

With Bloomberg Opinion

By Peter Coy

What’s Your

Net Worth Number?

Your Net Worth Number