I totally agree with your bottom sentence. Want to see real poverty? Go to the middle east, and NOT in the touristy areas. Often, for them it's no plumbing, no electricity and no cars either. Cell phones and internet? lol, nope. I saw it myself.

Most of the wealth that exists refers to some kind of physical asset. Be it a railroad, house, or stock in a profit making company. It matter little who controls this kind of wealth, be it by a 1 person or 100,000 people. Most people need to have at least some form of money that can be use to buy consumable goods. We have a total of 600 billion dollars in cash (M0 supply), the rest of money is tied up in assets for the most part. IF we divide this by 300 million, we have about $2,000 to go around to every person. The best anyone could get with that is live for about a month or two month at best without having to work.

Most of us have to work to have material possession that make life possible. Afterall, it is productive effort that is root of money and gives money its value. The rich hold a lot of value, but they also have to protect it. It is not easy to do, consider most jackpot lottery winners lose all their money within 5 years.

Using money to build wealth is a definite skill and everyone benefits from wealth creation.. Unfortunately, money is being made by rent seeking, which is made possible by the government we got. We must change our government if we want the virtue to lead to riches as oppose to corruption.

You are saying that the banking establishment is still issuing liars loans to anyone who takes out a loan to buy a home.. I'd like to see your source for that. I do not believe that all home buyers today are able to buy a home without significant equilty. Unless the property appraisals are massively inflated by all appraisers this can't be so. Appraisers are not looters; they must do a fair valuation or they will not be retained by others..Buyers have as much equity after the purchase as they had savings before the purchase (less closing costs if they have to pay them.)
The fact is that the numbers in the article comparing wealth are true. There is a massive difference in wealth and it has been growing even while the US economy has gone from producing valuable goods to producing depreciating fiat. I can't say what the author wanted to prove, but the argument by Felix Salmon doesn't refute the article's facts
.
Your point, I think, is that millions of US residents who are effectively bankrupt if they lose their jobs because of the debt they owe, are better off than millions of residents of India who also live from payday to payday. Clearly that is true today and lumping them all together is no more rational than ignoring the overwhelming debt that threatens to make the comparison more rational when the banking cartel finally crashes. It's unlikely that the banking executives will be the ones made "poor" by their piracy and looting.

As pure, amoral strategy, that quoted paragraph makes perfect sense. It's the "hot dog vendor problem" of economics.

The trick is to wean the stupid majority off their TV habit, which keeps telling them that the two parties = the "normal" political spectrum.

I wish a list of the names of these sixty-two had been added. Are they laissez-faire capitalists? Crony capitalists? Politicians? Lawyers? Oil potentates? Socialists? Did they earn their wealth? Or steal it? Does anyone in GGO know who they are?

Well said, Herb! We have let the looters take over.

Spot on! The overwhelming number of the countries in the world are run by dictators or suffer from socialism. If capitalism were given a chance, they could reap the rewards. Rich people employ people. I'm not into class envy. It always makes me smile when the people who say that the rich are evil rush out to buy lottery tickets for the chance of becoming rich.

Excellent data. I need to become familiar with this!

This light of another's candle diminishes ones own not at all.

In this case, far from it. Does anyone think their standard of living is worse than it was 20, 50, 100, 500 years ago? No? I thought so. Wealth is being created for all, and although jealousy is a problem rich people are not.

A real issue is that the ability to provide relevant value is getting harder and harder. People, actual people, need to be more competent to provide value, and there are a LOT of people, more every year.

Forget about the top 62 individuals. The top 25% earners of all individuals are far more capable to earn the money they do, than the bottom 25%. Far more, and there are more and more of the fays guys at the bottom complaining that they don't earn enough, while talking on iPhones, watching TV and surfing porn on the internet.

You missed the point, and went off on a hell of a tangent. The point wasn't that the debt wasn't valid, but that the thought of "68 people in the world are worth the same as the bottom half..." isn't valid by the way a normal person would think about it.

For example, a person who just bought a house using a mortgage likely now owes more on the mortgage than they are worth (even taking into account the value of the home). Would you consider them poor? I wouldn't, but they get added into the list as someone poor, and because their net value is negative, it makes this oft-cited statistic seem worse.

I must disagree with the supposed two (2) party system as stated; I put forth the reason for this wealth expanse is exactly because the two (2) party system is in fact a one (1) party system.

What I mean by this is as follows; In 1913 the Democrats tricked the public into believing the Senate needed to be elected by the people as the Congress was/is. With this slight of hand they passed and ratified the 17th Amendment forever destroying the two (2) party system. This destruction is done because the Senators no longer were appointed by the States, [which was done to protect the whole over the majority], and now they had to win over the majority vote; meaning they had to make people happy [ie: buy their vote]. When this happened the Conservative knowing the same thing a parent knows, [your children are not happy when you say no], had to give in to keep their position in Federal government. So the Conservative slowly [in the beginning] moved left and the Progressive [by definition COMMUNIST] had to move further left meaning someone had to make out from all 'the chickens in every pot' philosophy needed to buy votes.

The ONLY good way to stop this madness is to repeal the 17th Amendment go back to the Senate being appointed by the State's governor which will stop the spend, spend, spend screwing We the People are getting now.

For starters...they are not elite...most have rendered themselves as the great unwashed. What ever the balance, those not obvious, must be looked at: How did they get there, did they create or produce beneficial values that stand the test of time, have they competed honestly? These and many other question must be asked before determining
whether they be found wanting or wanted.

Poorest 3.6 Billion People on the Entire Planet...Many of them likely live in command economies or 3rd world hell holes where there is no free market.

If the debt wasn't going to be collected, i.e., its all bad debt, then maybe it makes sense to ignore it. I don't recall the banks agreeing to cancel the debt when the taxpayers bailed them out and if it was ever going to happen that was the most opportune moment. Bet you the bankster cartel won't be giving up their security (property of the debtors that the article includes as the assets of the poor) on the debt though, and that means you can't ignore the debt.
The Reuters Felix Salmon article is rubbish. (He no longer works at Reuters.)
(Granted that the debt was created from nothing by the banksters and they ought to be forced to surrender every bit of property they have looted in the past 103 years. But that would change the assets of the elite looters possibly by hundreds of billions.)

I am all for producers keeping the wealth they create and articles that blame producers for "uneven wealth distribution" should be refuted with facts. However, looters should be punished so severely that others are deterred from making any such attempt in the future.

My only regret... that (for now) I am not one of 62... but am working to somehow reverse that temporary misfortune.. If I can be that single person Oxfam wants to make the target evil one - - so much the better. :-)

It sounds like one of those "shame and guilt the evil rich and vile prosperous" articles the left is so fond of. Instead of a pity-pot article enabling the "woe is me, I deserve..." hogwash the moocher is drowning in, they should be working to make these 3.6 billion "impoverished humans" productive and, in so doing, wealthy.

I don't buy into that guilt. Because it's a tool used to keep people from becoming producers and capitalists and, yes, wealthy. Not just by their own standards, but the lefty elite who determine who are the "haves" and who are the "have nots". That... and the brainwashing of (a) "the rich are evil, why would you want to be one?" and (b) "Why work when you can scam and loot and wheedle it out of others?"

under the current system set up back in 1913 with the creation of the Fed (read "Creature from Jekyll Island"), and the fact that 95%+ of elected officals are re-elected...nothing will change after 2016...we are past the point of reversing 100+ years of abuse by the Fed and politicians worldwide...the amount of debt created is beyond pale...in the trillions of dollars...

prepare and be ready WHEN...not IF the collapse comes...

I wonder, what role would the TPP play in all of this?

When I was a kid, I actually liked Scrooge McDuck and his money bin. As I grew up I learned that money really gives you freedom to do what you want, which in my case is to start companies around inventions that I come up with and make them grow and then sell them to larger companies and move on. I used to be in medical device development in two companies that I started, but I got out of medical when the FDA moved in with their onerous regulations.
My current one is tribalwhips.com Nothing earth shaking, but it gives me a chance to use my engineering training (and what I can learn from youtube these days) to come up with new stuff.

Of course they wouldn't, but that doesn't stop the screwy mental image so many lefties have of rich people as fatcats in some giant Scrooge McDuckian vault, rolling around naked in giant piles of gold coins.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon...

I don't resent the 62, I resent the 3.6 billion who allow themselves to be manipulated. The UN wants to level the playing field, between them and the middle class, not including rich politicians. Hillary would retain her 4 multi-million $ compounds, Obama would live in the million $ house in Fla. he bought. The middle class would have their property *UN Agenda 21/2030) taken from them, savings would be used for the pooerst, while the big cats called the shots as in any dictatorship. I do not mind those who earn their big salaries keeping it, but when someone like Bill Gates wants to decide who lives and dies and ruin the schools, I resent that.
If Brad and Angie want multiple million dollar houses and fly a jet there, or fly in nothing but caviar, okay - just shut up about how other people should live. Don't think that questionably earned money gives you the right to take rights from those without the bucks. Stop making poor people think their only option is to stand in line for entitlements. Allow them the right to be free and earn their living, or figure it out. Don't make people slaves.