In a shocking report, the Wall Street Journal has noted that the 29.7 million people in the world (that is less than one person in 200) each with household net worth of $1 million control only about $89 trillion or 39% of the world’s wealth, not 90% or 99% as some people in the Occupy Movement appear to have reported in the media. Fortunately that’s up from a share of 35.6% in 2010, and their wealth increased by about $20 trillion. Given that the growth is about 3.4% over 18 months or more than 2% per annum, the millionaires and billionaires may control about 90% of the world’s wealth in another 30 years.
The U.S. has been the largest wealth generator over the past 18 months, according to the report, adding $4.6 trillion to global wealth. China ranked second with $4 trillion, followed by Japan ($3.8 trillion), Brazil ($1.87 trillion) and Australia ($1.85 trillion).
There are now about 30,000 people world-wide worth $100 million or more and 2,700 worth $500 million or more. There are more than 1200 billionaires in the world.
The fastest growth in millionaires and billionaires is likely to come from the fastest growing economies of the world; that is China, India and Brazil. China now has a million millionaires. Wealth in China is expected to grow by 90%, to $39 trillion, by 2016. Wealth in India and Brazil is well behind China but is expected to more than double to $8.9 trillion and $9.2 trillion respectively in the next five years.
One way to show that wealthy people are not really that wealthy may be demonstrated by the fact that no single person is still able to buy a company like Apple, Google, Facebook or Microsoft.
