By Way of Comparison

...the question I'm stumbling toward here is what does it mean for me, and for the millions of Americans like me, to be a part of the top 10 percent, to be among the 400 million or so wealthiest people on earth, when it's also true that missing our next paycheck could be financially disastrous?

That globalrichlist calculator also got me to thinking of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and of their apparent decision to live as expatriate royalty of a sort in Namibia.

Namibia is not one of the poorest nation's in the world. Plug their per capita income of $7,000 (US) into that grl calculator and it would appear that the average Namibian is still far better off than the average earthling (the top 13.96 percent, it says). Then again, since Namibia ranks 124th in income equality, per capita income probably isn't a very useful measurement of the average Namibian.

Suffice it to say that, compared to me and to people like me, the people of Namibia are very, very poor. And compared to me and to people like me, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are very, very rich. If I got fired tomorrow and were unable to collect unemployment, then I might not feel like it, but the truth is, big-picture-wise, I have more in common with Pitt and Jolie than I do with most people in Namibia....

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are rich people. And, provided the paychecks keep coming in, so am I (just ask the 5.6 billion or so people I'm wealthier than). One question, then, given the current shape of the world, is what does it mean to be, in Dickens' terms, good rich people?

Most of the world is more like Namibia than it is like Los Angeles, and Namibia will still be there whether or not we go over in person to stare it in the face. Pitt and Jolie provide a case study, of sorts.

[via slacktivist]