The world's top incomes

Posted at 10:56 AM on June 6, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture has an intriguing graphic posted today. It's a historical comparison of the top 1% of income owners in major countries.

It comes from the Paris School of Economics, which is also building an online database to allow you to crunch the numbers some more. Unfortunately, it's not entirely built out yet, although you can do a little playing on it.

---

Comments (6)

What happened in 1950 to shoot the Aussies up so high relative to the others? Just how old is Rupert Murdoch, anyway....?

Posted by Jim Hart | June 6, 2011 11:46 AM

---

Look at that dot com bubble burst!

Posted by jon | June 6, 2011 12:15 PM

---

Trickle down economics is magical, it makes water run uphill apparently.

Posted by Matt W | June 6, 2011 12:36 PM

---

I would be interested in seeing the EU as a whole added to that graph, as well as Russia.

Posted by Tyler | June 6, 2011 12:41 PM

---

Dynastic wealth is making a comeback. Good for the fortunate few, bad for the country.

Posted by kennedy | June 6, 2011 2:29 PM

---

Facts in isolation are always misleading.

Would be interesting to see this displayed with a graph of average income for the nation over that same period.
Here is a chart for the US:
http://visualizingeconomics.com/2008/05/04/average-income-in-the-united-states-1913-2006/

And then some background on top income earners such as 75% of people who hit the list only make it once (list of top 400 anyways).
http://is.gd/mV2KFV

It is easy to look at something like this and say "wow, those rich guys are getting richer" and forget how we have all gotten very rich ourselves (on average) and that the part of the hill we are climbing make much greater marginal impact in our lives than they are. A boost in income from $30k to $60k is a whole lot more meaningful than a boost from $3MM to $6MM.

Posted by matt | June 6, 2011 2:54 PM

---

Post a comment

The following HTML tags are allowed in your comments:
+ Bold: <b>Text</b>
+ Italic: <i>Text</i>
+ Link: <a href="http://url" target="_blank">Link</a>
Fields marked with * are required.

Name*:

E-mail Address*:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments*:

Comment Preview appears above this form upon pressing the "preview" button. Edit your comment and press "preview" again, until you are satisfied with your comment.

Your comment may not appear on the blog until several minutes after it was submitted.

• E-mail this page
• Print this page
• Tweet this page
• Share this

Services

• Hourly Newscast
• HD Radio
• iPhone App / Mobile
• E-mail newsletters
• RSS feeds
• Podcasts
• Submit your photos
• Videos
• Weather
• Most e-mailed stories