I do a fair amount of reading finance and economic
junk. Some of it is interesting, some of
it isn’t. Sometimes I get to the end of an article and realize my eyes have
been closed for half of it. And every so
often I’ll read a piece about finance or the economy that applies to life. This article in particular was “50 Reasons We’re
Living Through the Greatest Period in World History.” While a lot of it was medical advances (we
live longer, we don’t have mass deaths from the flu) or the fact that the US
now produces 57% more oil than we did in 2007, there were two data points that stuck
out in particular.
1. You
need an annual income of $34,000 a year to be in the richest 1% of the world. (Source: Branko Milanovic’s 2010 book The
Haves and the Have-Nots).
While I know that in the US, $34K doesn’t seem like a lot of
money, most of us meet that benchmark. I’ve
been lucky enough to travel to what are considered third world or developing
nations. Did you see the movie “District
9?” They didn’t make up how people are
living. Those townships are real. People in 2013 are living without clean
water, without toilets that flush or electricity, without access to education,
without access to medical care.
Which leads me to the other data point – the one that I can’t
get out of my mind:
2.
Only 4% of humans get to live in America.
Four percent. We get caught up in our government issues,
personal issues, and the fact that our rent is increasing 25%. The reality is that we live in a country
where 89% of the households have air conditioning. Yes, our government is a train wreck, college
is prohibitively expensive, our economy hasn’t recovered from 2008 and life isn’t
perfect. But I can drink water from the
tap, I don’t live in a war zone, as a female I can show my arms, legs and face
in public. Every time I travel, I am
thankful when I touch back down on American soil.
We get caught up in not being part of the 1% of Americans
when we should be incredibly thankful for demographic luck and that we are 4% of the world.
