I could tell you that the richest 1% of Americans are nearly 140 times what the bottom 20% make or I could say that the top 1% are close to having as much wealth as the bottom 90% but these are just numbers what really puts inequality into perspective is seeing how your life would change as you move up the economic ladder so let's take a journey starting from the average American earning around $50,000 a year through the millionaires to the billionaires and even further Beyond and finally we'll enter with the people whose wealth is so vast
that it's pretty much much impossible to count now life's always been hard for the people at the bottom of the pile it's a fact that hasn't changed in recorded history and probably won't change for a very long time into the future but what has been changing recently is where you draw the line one of rising inequality worst effects is how it decimated the middle class jobs which used to keep a whole family afloat barely make enough to pay for a one bed flat so let's check in with how the average American is doing today according
to CNBC in 2023 the average median salary in the US was around $48,000 if you put all different salaries in the US into ascending order and took the exact middle one that's what you'd get considering it's been a year since then and it make things simpler let's run that number up to around $50,000 so what would your life look like living on that amount of money in some of the US's most important cities like San Francisco or New York earning $50,000 wouldn't even get you your own apartment in fact you need to pretty much double
your earnings before you could live alone and actually save some of that money you earn obviously the biggest factor is rent a third of New Yorkers pay over half their total earnings to towards it it's a barrier for entry that blocks these cities off for nearly everyone outside of the most expensive cities it does get a bit better but the average quality of life for Americans is still in the gutter so what about the most average city in the US of course every city is in its own different world but going purely by the cost
of living Dallas is a good choice at around 2% more than the US average unfortunately though the median us salary is still around $50,000 a year behind what you'd need for a comfortable life in Dallas but let's take a look at the numbers anyway first that 50,000 goes down to 42,000 after taxes get taken off next you can take off the rent even a studio apartment sets you back around $1,400 a month on average a one bedroom is generally a couple hundred more per month and it means you'll be paying around $16 to $177,000 a
year in rent at a minimum that puts our leftover money at about $26,000 next we can take off another $166,000 for living costs like food bills transportation and other necessary costs ultimately this leaves you with around $10,000 living with the barest of Necessities but that's still before all the unforeseen one-off cost like if your car breaks down or medical costs pretty soon there's nothing left over to save for a rainy day the bottom line is that even the average American living alone in the average city on the average salary isn't making enough to live a
good life it's certainly not enough to buy a house with or start a family it's no surprise then that a staggering 36% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck up 4% from 5 years ago meanwhile debt is increasing recently the average debt for an American Rose above $100,000 while mortgage costs make up the bulk of that figure it still shows that even just the bare necessities are still more than what people can afford at this level of wealth you're going to be doing pretty much everything for yourself you won't be able to afford to
eat out very often if at all so you'll need to cook for yourself if you want to go somewhere you're only a few taxi fars away from not making rent next month you'll probably be able to afford two maybe three rooms to live in probably in a shed flat if you want to save some of that money you're running and for all of this you'll need to still be working long hours just to scrape by Financial stress is one of the worst kinds of stress anyone who's been there knows that it sits on your mind
pretty much all of the time then there are the costs that aren't immediately visible for a lot of people medical insurance is hoping they don't get sick it'll make you ignore things you really shouldn't it often means paying for treatment or surgery later down the line both with your wallet and with your own pain and suffering if you can't afford to buy clothes and shoes that will last you a long time you'll need to buy new ones every year when they fall apart even rent itself is just losing money compared to paying off a house
then there are the costs in time high rents in the inner city mean you'll be commuting every morning and every evening you'll probably need to take more hours at work to get by to begin with then there are just the little things like going out of your way to the cheaper grocery store even though it's miles away compared to other options being poort is incredibly expensive in pretty much every single way as inequality has risen and increased inflation the amount of money you need to live a comfortable life has gone up too it's pushed more
and more people out of the middle class professions like teaching which used to earn you a good living are now too poorly paid to even survive on there's a reason any half of all Educators in the US now have a second job but on the other side of the coin the breakdown of the middle class is push some people above it if you have your own business then you'll know how expensive it is to pay for all the different apps and software needed to run your business which is why I want to tell you about
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you will get your first app for free of odu's all in one Business Solution the amount of millionaires in the US grew by over 7% in 2023 reaching nearly 7 and2 million people with that many people it isn't surprising that being a millia now only places you at the bottom of the upper class A lot of the people with a net worth between $1 and $10 million live fairly normal lives compared to the average Lots will still have salary jobs clocking to work each day and go home to their family at the end of it
all however the difference is in the details a pretty good system for imagining how levels of wealth change your life is to compare it to the cost of things that you already know if you're trying to scrape Buy on 50,000 then something like a first class plane ticket would be out of the question at around $1,500 to $55,000 depending on the airline and the destination it costs around 2 to 10% of your yearly earnings a lot to pay for more leg rors and complimentary drinks but if you're making 500,000 a year instead then it's completely
different now it's just 0.2% to 1% % of your yearly earnings it's still not enough to not think about but it's the same proportional cost that an economy ticket would be for someone of 50,000 it's like spending $150 to $500 on plane tickets if you want to Splash out on luxury then you can as your earnings increase past that point it obviously gets even more affordable pretty soon a first class ticket cost the same proportionally as a meal to a fancy restaurant for someone with a regular job you probably still can't do it every day
but it's manageable meanwhile that meal that would have cost $80 goes down to $8 or less the bottom line is that rare treats for regular people become normal and things completely out of their reach are suddenly there for the taking at the upper end of this wealth bracket the way you interact with the service economy starts changing as well at a net worth of 10 million you can now begin to think about employing people just to make your life easier a personal assistant to plan your schedule and deal with all the small things that you
can't be bothered with or maybe an in-house Chef to bring whatever restaurant quality food you want in your kitchen the idea of paying someone else's salary is completely out there for someone making a regular salary themselves but paying that for 4,000 assistant salary is the equivalent of a regular person paying $400 a year it's easily affordable it's no surprise then at this level you can already get attached from the experience that most other people have so many of the struggles and problems that regular people deal with are gone because you can afford to pay someone
else to do it for you buying your groceries driving you around even raising your kids it can all now be paid for it's at the lower end of this wealth bracket where you find the happiest people overall studies vary on what the actual figure is but it usually ranges from around 100 to 500,000 a year it's key to make enough to give you a comfortable life but it's not too much otherwise it begins to alienate you from regular people at this point you're not rich enough for your own personal Entourage or anything like that instead
you can safely assume the people you spend time with actually like you and not just your money as you get richer that becomes a real problem in fact getting richer brings in a whole lot of different problems which brings us on to our next wealth class the people with around 10 to $100 million in assets surprisingly in the US this still isn't that exclusive of a club even at 10 million there's still nearly 1 and2 million people who are richer than you in the us alone but at $100 million there's only around $25,000 people Rich
than you so this level of wealth still includes a lot of people so let's look back at the costs by adding another zero to your bank account you've shifted the proportions of things by the same amount those first class plane tickets now cost the equivalent of what $15 to $50 means to a regular person that date at the restaurant goes down from $80 to 80 first there's the question of where this even comes from why you might see people like the top doctors in the country at this level of wealth the majority of people who
are this Rich will be involved in the financial industry it's because this level of money doesn't come from your actual work it comes from Investments and owning things that make money for you in Teton County Wisconsin the richest county in the US per capit over 80% of the money flowing through it came from Investments alone the mountain town has become a playground for the orra rich and it's an interesting case study that we'll get into later the way you use money also changes at this level of wealth you can pretty much buy anything you want
within reason so instead money becomes a tool for increasing your status you might be proud of your new $2 million boat but your friend just bought one for5 million it's a constant competition especially for the newly minted multi-millionaires at this level status becomes everything because it's the only thing that will open the doors to High Society while those first class tickets are certainly more affordable it won't look good to your new friends so instead you'll now need to Charter a private playe if you still want to fit in everyone is trying to climb the ladder
and to do that you need to spend more as you get richer and now net worth of 10 to $100 million might be enough to get you on the doors of some private golf clubs but it won't make a big splash while you might now start brushing shoulders with the true Elites you will still have to make an impression to get on their radar and we've only talked about going up so far but there's also people going down the wealth ladder as well there are generally two kinds of people you'll meet at this level of
wealth new money who are climbing the ladder and old money who are slowly losing their fortunes there's a constant tension between the two groups recently we've seen more self-made Millionaires and billionaires than ever before meanwhile lots of people from traditionally Rich families are losing it all trying to hang on to their old Lifestyles the differences are even more pronounced when you get into the next level of wealth s millionaires or people with a net worth of over $100 million they're at the very top of their companies and their Industries above the common rapple of multi-millionaires
but even this far towards the top and they're still playing the same games of jealousy and pointless rivalry for the newly Rich it's normally based on how rich you can appear pretty much anyone who's gotten to this level on their own doesn't care about taste or subtlety only the price tag matters the apartments they buy are perfect examples New York is the city with the most Senti Millionaires and the skyscrapers surrounding Central Park are where the majority of them live but once you've seen one of those pen houses you've pretty much seen them all they're
all just boxes in the sky made of glass and concrete they will have the same floor plan in the same minimalist overpriced decorations whether you're getting a $10 million apartment or $100 million apartment the only difference is the square footage and the view these apartments are just the tip of the iceberg hundreds of millions is the point where you can now start employing entire communities of people for the most trivial of desires full sta for Yachts you can only spend 2 weeks a year on a super yacht reportedly owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is
causing some big waves in the Netherlands CBS 2 Tina Krauss talked to some people who oppose the idea of taking down a historic bridge to make room for the Billionaire's boats it's a Bridge Over Troubled Waters in The Netherlands as City officials in roddam consider a plan to take apart the historic structure to make Ro for this the largest sailing yacht in the world permanent workers for homes out in the middle of nowhere it isn't uncommon for people at this level to own over 10 properties for their own personal use outside of their massive real
estate portfolios people at this point will have their own private planes as well rather than just Charing them out in fact they often rent out their planes when they're not using them everyone at this level of wealth has a lot of power just from their money alone it's at this point when you can start using it to make a difference on a societal level you might not be able to solve the big problems but you can easily Lo be the government or set up your own International charity it also gives you the ability to buy
the attention and time of pretty much anyone you want you can have world famous bands play at your parties or celebrity chefs to make you breakfast the only limit really at this point is your own imagination then there are the political and the social connections towards the billionaire end of the spectrum your name alone will get you whatever you want if you want to have personal conversations with world leaders or other industry magnates they're only a phone call away people at this level and Beyond start to struggle to find things to spend their ludicrous wealth
on often they turn to collecting buying up million dooll artworks or artifacts like a kid collecting Pokémon cards Nicholas Cage was once worth over 150 million dollar and he blew a large chunk of this on multiple Mansions a private island and a collection of dinosaur fossils including a full T-rex skull as you go further up the ladder your perception changes until you're completely out of touch with the world sentim millionaires are far past this point all their need are cater to nobody around them disagrees with them and they're given luxuries far beyond what any normal
person could ever dream of it makes them isolate themselves from the rest of the world but they still often idolize the normal life they left behind it's part of the reason so many ultra high Networth people have moved to tetan County there's a lots of benefits for them it's a tax Haven and the influx of rich people has made it a property Speculator dream it is the wealthiest and most unequal in America the average income here is $318,000 and the average single family home price is now more than $5.5 million it's Nation leading bad if
you're making 4050 $60,000 you're likely living in your car or you're living 45 minutes away for most people it's becoming unlivable the reason he says is that the ultra wealthy find Teton County very livable their arrival here accelerated during Co the desire for multi-million dollar Mountain escapes has created a new land rush but perhaps more importantly it lets them cosplayers workingclass Americans they can spend their time hiking in the Rocky Mountains or fishing in the rivers then come home to that comfy multi-million dollar mansion it also provides psychological insulation against the simple fact that their
lifestyles are toxic to both the planet and Society while living standards for most people haven't really changed or have even gotten worse in the west the standards for the ultra Rich of Skyrocket it stiil Millionaires and billionaires enjoy the excess profits of entire Industries using it to enrich themselves further or just for frivolous luxuries once you get to the billionaire class though there aren't really that many more changes every everything just gets even bigger those connections that gave you links to politicians now let you directly influence public policy and put you on a first a
basis with world leaders instead of Mega Yachts you can afford entire fleets of luxury ships forget a private plane you can now buy your own airport and even your own Airline which is why most billionaires stay out of the spotlight while a few like musk and Trump have leveraged their status for even more influence despite the completely insane levels of wealth they've attained they still aren't actually at the highest level the true wealthiest people in the world aren't going to show up in the Forbes list because their wealth can't be calculated multi-millionaires might dominate a
whole company while billionaires control entire Industries but these people dominate whole countries and societies hoovering up the excess profits Putin's one of these people it's estimated that he has over $200 billion in his personal portfolio of assets tied up in land property art and oil rights but at this level wealth goes beyond just money and stuff being at a netw worth of 230 billion roughly being perceived as the richest person uh on Earth Earth well I think quiton is significantly richer than me you really do yeah yes money is just a means to an end
a way to change the world around you but the power these people have outd does all of that it makes money alone meaningless just something to distribute among your cronies and your subordinates while billionaires can buy mansions and secure compounds people with this higher level of wealth can buy entire cities just look at what the Saudis have been doing their control of a large portion of the world's oil supply have made their royal family the richest people to ever exist some estimates put their net worth at over $1.4 trillion and it could easily be a
whole lot more than that with that many zeros pretty much everything loses its cost compared to your total wealth but the Richer and more powerful you get the more worried you become about losing it all it's this pressure plus the fact that there's nothing else to do with it that has spurred on the construction of massive vany projects in the Middle East Dubai's fake islands and Saudi Arabia's ridiculous line City are just a few examples of this they're so rich that they're building a city-sized air conditioned glass building in the middle of the desert set
to house 9 million people once it's completed meanwhile Dubai has spent millions and millions importing special types of sand to make the artificial Islands regular desert sand just doesn't stand up to the tides the levels of wealth and wayte it takes to complete these projects are truly dystopian their hope is that once the world gets over its addiction to oil these futuristic tourist attractions will be enough to sustain these places economies along with these Mega projects comes the standard luxuries that billions can buy you fleets of super yachts and private jets whole crates of cocaine
and Other Drugs mansions and Estates across the world that used to belong to royalty at this point we should take a look back at where we started from an average salary all the way into the trillions modern society has enabled inequality that outshines any other period in history even if you saved every penny you earn from an untaxed $50,000 salary it would still take you 28 million years to equal the Saudis a net worth and with inflation this basically just makes it impossible the world's economy is constantly working at a Breakneck Pace to support these
people and their level of luxury every year they manage to squeeze out more money and take more control of society it can only continue on indefinitely if technology and human development can somehow outpace human greed we haven't seen these levels of decadence in human history before but we have seen the same cycle of decadence and Decay happen over and over again eventually it all comes crumbling down we can only hope that if it all does fall apart they won't take the rest of the world with them
