What percent of the population needs to be poor for the other % to be rich?

Question

The proposition "we can all be rich" is a great fallacy

Answer 1

It is only a fallacy because you are looking at relatives.

A "poor" person in the United States lives in a trailer and complains because they can only afford basic cable.

A "rich" person in another country might not have air conditioning.

Answer 2

Global inequalities persist at staggering levels. The richest 10 percent of the world's population's income is roughly 117 times higher than the poorest 10 percent, according to calculations performed by economists at the Economics Policy Institute, using data from the International Monetary Fund. This is a huge jump from the ratio in 1980, when the income of the richest 10 percent was about 79 times higher than the poorest 10 percent.
Exclude fast-growing China from the equation, and the disparities are even more shocking. The income ratio from the richest 10 percent to the poorest 10 percent rose from 90:1 in 19S0 to 154:1 in 1999.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World/
Grotesque_Inequality.html

Answer 3

To the extent that the services are the primary product of an economy, the measure of rich is how many hours of other peoples labor can you buy with an hour of yours, This was the way the world worked before the about 1850, but industrialization changed that and everyone in industrialized countries grew richer. With the recent trends toward a services becoming a larger share of the economy, we seem to have reversed the directions in the US. and and are moving toward a state where a person growing richer means someone else is growing poorer.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/01/27/changes-in-household-income-by-quintiles/

Answer 4

It depends on how you define "rich" and "poor". In many countries, there is a (relatively) small percentage of poor people, but also a (relatively) smaller percentage of rich people. Think of Norway and other European socialist democracies. Others have large proportions of destitute with a very small percentage of rich people- think of Mexico.

But, even if we all could be rich, why would we need to be?

Answer 5

in indonesia the top 10% of population control 75% of wealth, also in any country, it depends on how rich you want to be as there is only so much money, not everyone can have a private jet as there would be no comercial airliners so there would be no jobs for people