Just How Rich Are You?
I learned today that I'm approximately the 650 millionth richest person on earth. That sounded pretty disheartening at first — and just about right, since I'm a recent college grad piecing together enough jobs to pay my rent — until I was told I nearly cracked the top 10 percent of all wage earners.
I found this information on "Global Rich List," a web site that takes your annual income and lets you know just how you measure up in the whole economic scheme of things. The website informs visitors that, Three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women. (There are currently 6.7 billion people on earth.)
Along with providing a picture of relative wealth, the site asks visitors to use some of their wealth to benefit those aided by the international relief agency CARE. After all, according to the Global Rich List, the roughly $10 I've been known to spend on coffee each week could buy more than two dozen fruit trees for Honduran farmers.
So, how do you measure up? Visit The Global Rich List and find out.
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Just How Rich Are You?
On the previous advice, I have just measured myself up on The Global Rich List. It seems I am in the top 8.33 percent of the richest people on Earth. While I can definitely say I was quite shocked by this, I must say I am even more shocked and embarrassed by what I could have purchased with a mere $73 of my income.
It looks as though just a portion of the money I spent on clothes last week could have been spent on a mobile health clinic for HIV/AIDS orphans in Uganda. Those clothes don't seem so important as they did when I was in the store, but will I feel differently next time?
Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this information will really permeate people's minds for more than the few minutes it takes them to find out where they rank on The Global Rich List. The poor keep getting poorer, the sick keep getting sicker, and those of us on the top of the list keep thinking we just don't have enough. It seems to be embedded in our minds, especially those of us in the west, that there just is never enough.
The truth is most of us could do without much of what we use, wear or eat, but for some reason we don't believe we can do without. Much of that belief, I think, is societal and cultural, and doesn't seem to be changing for the better. Especially as gas and food prices rise, and the economy falls, our fear of not having enough is growing.
So, the real question is: What will it take, if anything, to get us to see just how rich we really are?
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