This is an interesting idea, but the numbers are bogus. It says 2% of the world (130M people) makes more than $25,000. This is, however, the median American personal income, so we know that at least 150M Americans make at least that much, <i>plus</i> all the people who do so elsewhere (probably at least another 150M, counting UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc, all the wealthier countries).
Too bad this is broken...<p>It does not accept negative wealth (well... I own about 2000 USD in personal objects, have no investments, and still owe about 10k USD in student loans...)<p>If you input a negative number, it assumes it is positive, you can even try stripping the minus (or adding a minus) and clicking the button again, it won't even calculate again and will assume it is the same number.
I feel conflicted about donating to charity, Kiva(.org) is my money-for-good vehicle of choice but sometimes it feels as if my money could be better spent donating to charities that help people that can't afford to eat, eat. Long term spending of money to help people better themselves and those around them is the more sustainable model but short term helping people that are starving have access to life essentials has a greater impact and is more compassionate. If only it was simple as "I have $xxx, how can I have the greatest positive impact?".
things like this rub me the wrong way. you cannot compare income levels between countries with vastly different costs of living.<p>sure, first world countries will have a higher standard of living overall, but putting $25/hr in US up against $0.08/hr in Ghana is a misleading comparison of purchasing power.<p>case in point: in Ghana you can probably buy a castle full of servants on 80 acres for $25/hr.
Great app. Too bad a 1 percenters like me can't calculate my apparent wealth however.<p>Income works fine, but when I put in the data for wealth (no house, minimalistic materials, and meagre bank accounts) it gives me the error code: "Are you sure about that?"... Apparently, you cannot hold less than $1,500CAD of wealth, nor can you be classed within the bottom 22%.<p>The income bottom limit is $400CAD, which is much better. It's kind of funny how the stats don't feel so guilty when entering the lower limits. For a $400CAD yearly income: " In 1 hour you make $0.21 Meanwhile, the average labourer in Indonesia makes just $0.50 in the same time. "
I love it, what an effective message.<p>I think there is a bug in the form validation, if I put commas in my net worth, it gives me a completely different value than if I don't. Probably should intelligently strip out non numerals, or even reject non-numeral entries, since people of different nationalities use periods and commas differently.<p>Also, reading the methodology, very interesting, but I am intuiting it isn't so accurate. My net worth is higher vs average for U.S., and my income is lower vs average for U.S. but the site ranks me in the opposite direction when I change my entry values.
It doesn't seem to recognize negative numbers. So if you're like the 1 in 4 Americans who have zero or negative net worth, the "wealth" part of the app won't work.<p>* <a href="http://www.epi.org/press/news_from_epi_th_great_recession_exacerbated_existing_wealth_disparities_in/" rel="nofollow">http://www.epi.org/press/news_from_epi_th_great_recession_ex...</a>
Jarring background. More jarring information.<p>Interesting fact: being a 1-percenter in the US ($370k in 2010) makes you a .02-percenter on the worldwide scale.
I love how they hid a currency conversion fallacy by putting example of can of cock instead of glass of water. This website will make a walmart worker feel super rich than a person working in similar large store in Ghana even if both have more or less same quality of life.
Interesting. There's one bug though, when you select another country like Colombia, for instance, you have to enter the value in its currency. When you do, in that case 1k usd is 2 Million, the calculation seems to convert that to millions of dollars. Its not entirely clear which money format you should use.
Interestingly, the "Maximum income" (USD/year) is 2,200,000,000 (2.2 billion). Specifying a yearly income of 2B/year, however, puts you at #1 according to this. Why 2.2B? Seems rather arbitrary.