yeah couldn't possibly be that this talking point is absolute nonsense created by corrupt oligarchs and circulated by the media outlets they own to convince people that getting fleeced by the wealthy was somehow a good thing, and so they should vote against their own interests and lower said oligarch's taxes even if it means cutting programs those voters rely on.
The emirate of Dubai doesn't have much oil left. They've been trying to build up other sectors of their economy, including as a hub for commercial travel, shipping, finance, and perhaps most notably- as a vacation or residence destination that specifically caters to the super wealthy.
It isn't that oil is running out in Dubai - there never was much oil in Dubai. Most of the oil in UAE was in Abu Dhabi the whole time. It's just that Dubai arose as the good hub to trade middle eastern oil which caused Dubai's wealth. And that switch towards tourism, etc is not only done by Dubai, but done in the UAE as a whole.
Many of the most impoverished countries in the world also have very extreme wealth disparity and concentration. A small number of people at the top echelons of society are obscenely rich- while the millions and millions of people at the lower rungs are abjectly poor. This is certainly true in India, and very apparent in a place like Mumbai which is the country's economic center and home to many of India's wealthiest people. Also consider the enormous size and population of the country and imagine how much of an opportunity that presents for entrepreneurs who successfully tap into the market from the inside.
Unlike France or the UK, Germany hasn't got an obvious major city (e.g. London or Paris). Instead it has five cities all with similar importance. As a result, the billionaires are spread relatively evenly out - rather than clustered into one city.
Germany always has been a very polycentric nation. It's why the 100s of independent duchies and city-states never unified until 1871. Also, the technical city limits in Germany aren't very inclusive so usually more people will live in separate suburbs instead of the legal city itself.
I'd like to pound Bloomberg's smug 1% face into a bloody mess. Human garbage and a criminal, like the rest of the billionaires. If you've got a billion dollars, damn sure you didn't come by all of it honestly or ethically...with the possible exception of Warren Buffet...but I'll remain suspicious.
There is absolutely no way anyone should have billions and not share. The way these people buy their enormous mansions and yachts and private jets and the carbon footprint of their excessive lifestyle on the world is disgusting to me. And when there are people starving too.
Quizmaster: you have an apostrophe decorating Delhi (it appears as Delhi'). The type-in allows Delhi without the apostrophe, so life will go on if you don't fix it.
according to forbes (via wikipedia) there are 34 billionaires (18 individuals and 14 family holdings owning a billion which may individually be less than a billion). if 16 are in tokyo less than 15 must be in osaka to make the list. for the low overall numbers, blame a slow economy since the 80s.
Countries like China, India and Brazil where more than 80% of the population live like pigs in the mud featuring a list like this is like a piercing and loud yell to the ears of the human kind. I can hear them hienas laughing at all these people struggling in the mud.
Don't know about China and Brazil, but I'm living in India from my birth and I stay in a 2-storeyed bungalow owned and built by my dad <( ̄︶ ̄)> who earns nearly ₹100,000 per month and my mom owns a jewellery business 📿 and most people we know lives like us only maybe in condos or apartments but not in mud.
Maybe the definition of pig 🐷 in your country is different...
200 years ago neither China, India, nor Brazil had billionaires, and the vast majority still lived in the mud. The proliferation of billionaires shows that these countries have grown economically stronger, and in all of these countries people live better than they did 50 years ago. Prosperity is the anomaly, not poverty!
You do surprise me, I have always imagined that India was home to unbelievable, fabulous concentrations of wealth in the early days of the Raj. I was also under the impression that untold wealth found its way into the hands of the ruling classes in China in days of yore.
@orangeflag, 200 years ago, everyone was dirt poor, including Europeans. I mean, have you seen cities like London were like during the Industrial Revolution? I'm guessing very few people had over $1 billion dollars in those days. And @FadKrahmor, you're right that India and China used to be pretty rich before the industrialization of Europe, but even then that was concentrated in the hands of the political and economic elite.
My point is, 200 years ago, almost everyone everywhere was living in extreme poverty. Now, it's nonexistent in the West and below 10% (and still dropping) in India/China/Brazil. Not saying these countries don't still have issues with poverty or inequality--they definitely do--but comparing people in these countries to pigs is very inaccurate (and kinda offensive).
Update 2019. As far as I know, this quiz is now the only accurate list of its nature on the internet. The difference between this list and others is that I combined the billionaires by urban area, not city. This makes a big difference because the source data sometimes uses the urban area but sometimes lists a specific suburb, leading to distortions.
No one has suddenly attracted them there per se. They've most likely been at Alibaba (which is headquartered in Hangzhou) since the early days and have become billionaires post-IPO and the surge in the Alibaba share price.
I certainly don't know enough about the Philippines or Manila to know whether this is the case there, but often times when an area is so poor it's because of the billionaires there leeching the wealth out of the community.
The existence of billionaires is only partly predicated on the wealth of a country. Wealth disparity within a country is arguably as important a factor.
I thought of that too. It is also surprising that Guangzhou/Shenzhen has 77 billionaires and that Hong Kong has another 77. Combined, that is by far the largest amount of billionaires.
Surprised there's no Chicago (being the third biggest city in the US and home to many corporations) or Seattle (being a pretty major tech hub and home to people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos)
There are many reasons someone can become a billionaire, and some ways are definitely more desirable to society than others. The strongest argument for billionaires in my view is that society benefits from large businesses (though there are some downsides compared to smaller ones, I have used Facebook, Google and Amazon partially because of the reliability implied by the brand and also unique services in the case of Google) and in order for them to be run efficiently, somebody needs to be at the top making decisions. Just by the amount of power that individual has they must be a billionaire in practice even if we find some way to change this legally. I'm generally in favour of strong restrictions on these companies by governments (though in practice this is hard due to their multinational nature) but I'm not convinced that enough intervention to stop Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg being (in the meaningful sense) billionaires is required or necessarily beneficial.
On the other hand, Philip Green shouldn't be a billionaire. Though a free market will probably achieve this soon enough in the form of him wasting the money he drained from his businesses.
That's not the point. Michael Bloomberg owns more money than the bottom half of America put together and has chosen to spend his money on a useless political campaign fantasy. Anyone that has that much wealth should not be hoarding it while others struggle to survive on a meager $7.25 an hour. 40 percent of America (that's roughly 131 million people mind you) cannot afford a 400 dollar surprise expense. Meanwhile Mike Bloomberg could afford to buy the New York Met's (valued at 2.6 billion) without breaking his bank. If that sounds fair to anyone shame on you.
Whether it's fair or not it doesn't change the fact that, even as obscenely wealthy as he is, Bloomberg still is not wealthy enough to alone solve the issue of poverty in the world or even just America. If you took all of Mike's money and divided it evenly among every resident of the United States, we would each get $172. Less than half of what it would cost to cover your 400 dollar surprise.
That's not to say that he shouldn't be taxed higher, or that the system shouldn't be reformed to produce more wealth and income equality (points that Bloomberg himself would agree with)... but still... he's not capable of fixing poverty alone. He couldn't even make a dent. Really the federal government is the only entity that would have any hope of doing that.
Most people are innumerate. They have no idea how large numbers work. For example, a member of the New York Times editorial board claimed that, with the money that Bloomberg spent on the election, he could give every American $1 million dollars. (In reality he could have given everyone less than 2 dollars). When this New York Times staffer appeared on TV to state this incredibly wrong fact, TV host Brian Williams didn't even question it. It's sad that even among the so-called "elite" parts of society most people lack the ability to do even basic math. Most of our policy decisions are driven by emotion.
I was once trying to make myself feel better about not always giving out money to all the people in the Philippines who would beg me for it, even though I did give out large amounts of money to help a few specific people pay for needed surgeries, et cetera. I calculated that if I took the total amount of money that I had saved working in the KSA, and divided it among all of the people in the country that were living in extreme poverty, I could give each one half a penny.
In my opinion, more important than the lack of ability in basic arithmetic is a lack of scepticism to question the conclusions. I can immediately see that $500 million divided by 327 million people is between 1 and 2 dollars per person without having to think, but I wouldn't have much problem with people who couldn't also immediately perform that approximate calculation publishing news. What I do have a problem with is when people don't stop to think that there obviously isn't even enough money in the American economy for everyone to have much more than $1 million, or else the average person would be a millionaire already (including children), which they should be able to see is not the case (unless, ironically, they live in an elite bubble and hardly associate with anyone outside of it).
Only missed Stockholm, Tel Aviv, and Hangzhou. Did pretty good considering I spent a whole minute typing only US cities because I saw Bloomberg and assumed US only lol
8 billionaires live in Seattle and 8 is a smaller number than 20. Though some of the billionaires that have lived there are very famous and many times richer than most of the other billionaires in the world.
Gigantic city in China, commercial and economic hub, southern terminus of the Grand Canal, near Shanghai, one of the most prosperous cities in the country.
Bentonville is a nice little jewel set in an area surrounded by what some (or many) may call "rednecks."
Maybe the definition of pig 🐷 in your country is different...
My point is, 200 years ago, almost everyone everywhere was living in extreme poverty. Now, it's nonexistent in the West and below 10% (and still dropping) in India/China/Brazil. Not saying these countries don't still have issues with poverty or inequality--they definitely do--but comparing people in these countries to pigs is very inaccurate (and kinda offensive).
Anyone with more money than me is a dirty no good cheater whose wealth should be taxed.
Anyone with less money than me is a lazy, good for nothing mooch who needs to work harder and stop living off my tax dollars.
Only people with my exact amount of money are virtuous.
Now get off my lawn!
That's not to say that he shouldn't be taxed higher, or that the system shouldn't be reformed to produce more wealth and income equality (points that Bloomberg himself would agree with)... but still... he's not capable of fixing poverty alone. He couldn't even make a dent. Really the federal government is the only entity that would have any hope of doing that.