The Millionaires Bounced Back!

Yippie ki aye and hurrah, the economy is finally on the rebound!

Can you feel the prosperity surrounding you as the wealth flows back into the world? The millionaires can and they are feeling awesome!

Millionaire Population Bounces Back to Pre-Crisis Peak

The number of millionaire households in the world has bounced back to boom-time levels, according to a new study.

The 2010 Global Wealth Report by The Boston Consulting Group says there were 11.2 million millionaire households in the world at the end of 2009, a 14% jump from 2008. That puts the millionaire count about where it was in the good old days before the global financial crisis.

The U.S. had especially strong growth, with the number of millionaire households rising to 4.7 million -- still the largest number of millionaire households in the world. That means that roughly 4% of American households are millionaire households. (Singapore had the highest "millionaire density" with 11% of all households being millionaires).

So what does all of this rebound in prosperity mean for the average Joe in the streets?

The global growth at the top -- driven by last summer's rebound in financial markets -- marks a stark contrast with the continued malaise at the middle and bottom. As a result, inequality around the world has widened.

The study said 83% of the world's households own only 13% of the wealth, down from 14% the previous year. The top 0.5% of households (those with $5 million or more) owned 21%, or $23 trillion, of the world's wealth. That is up from 19% in 2008.

Read more: Wall Street Journal

Uh, yeah, um, kinda looks like we're still screwed, maybe worse than ever.


But at least the millionaires are recovering, that's a good thing right?



[edit on 6/13/10 by FortAnthem]

very nice post. rich getting richer, poor even poorer. but you have to consider, who is providing all the jobs and so on..... nah just kidding.
if this unbalance between rich and poor is growing, bad things more often happen. there will be more envy, more hate, more crime, more insecurity.
well, the rich will therefore live in a more hostile enviroment called society, which will cost them more security guards, fencing and so on. in the end they will have to pay more for the same kind of "healthier" enviroment, like they had before they got richer and the poor got poorer.



[edit on 13-6-2010 by icepack]

The rich recovered quicker because the rich tend to invest in the financial markets, which have gone a long way to recover. The "non-rich" often have their wealth in their homes and *that* market has *not* recovered.

Oh, but that paradigm doesn't fit the general blame the evil rich mood... sorry. It still doesn't change the factual nature of why the disparity.