Your information is way off. There are at least 25 million in USA alone.

The United States is a huge leader in this area. No other country even comes close.

Most studies use households rather than individuals so using BCG's numbers



The top 15 countries would have 28.794 millionaire households. We don't have the rest of the numbers (or if they are somewhere I didn't bother looking) but completing the series would give us somewhere around 32 million millionaire households. This isn't the same thing as the number of millionaires since any household with a couple would only make them both millionaires if their net-worth was over $2MM.

Wikipedia makes reference to the BCG study but also has some numbers that they reference to WealthInsight for individual millionaires rather than households. That series goes USA 5.2 Japan 2.1 Germany 1.3 China 1.3 UK 0.675 France 0.555 Canada 0.422 Switzerland 0.297 With this series you're not even going to get to 15 million millionaires although the data is from 2012 and I know last year Canadian media reported that Canada was in the 600k range so we could safely use a 1.5 multiple to add in the last two years. Still way under 40 million.

Every article I've clicked on just repeats the BCG number from above and I'm too lazy to go beyond page 2 of Google.

I dont believe that for multiple reasons.

The first being that the one with 10k can barely afford an accountant to tell him how to pay as little tax as possible while the milionaire will not only have this accountant, he may also park his money in tax havens etc. The bilionaire will have a lobby group telling the politicians to change the tax laws.

Similar to that, on a small income\profit, your living expenses are significant. The larger your profit, the less significant those are and the bigger a % can be reinvested. After a few dozen million of investment capital, this effect clearly starts to fade (unless you're an idiot who wants to flaunt his yachts and sport scars)

Then there is market mechanics. Some investments need to be done on large scale, some can be done on a small scale. There are many people with little money, competing over the small investments, but only few with big money.

To OP: What were the times in history when the distribution was even more unequal ? What happened in those times to change it around ? can we learn anything from that ?

The Roman Plutocracy. I havn´t studied it, but I think there was a revolution or threats of revoltion and the wealth was distributed more equally. We can probably learn from it, unless equilibrium has changed too much, that´s why I started this thread.

i think it's fairly well accepted that it's a lot easier to generate higher returns with a lower amount of starting capital. maybe someone can articulate exactly why that is. i assume it's simply that even though there are many more people competing for smaller deals, many of them aren't sophisticated and it's actually possible to find an outlier amazing opportunity.

for example, it's not unusual to find a small business owner who just wants to "get out of the business" and will sell at far below a true market price. this would never happen with the owner of a privately held billion dollar company.

This is true if we are talking obscenely large amounts as in a giant hedge fund vs a more moderately sized fund but the isn't really relevant to most people. If were talking more what a typical 9-5 person has they are at a huge disadvantage to people with a couple of million and those people are at a disadvantage to people with $50MM and so on. The number at which having a bigger bankroll leads to a reduction in ability to generate return is so high that it isn't relevant.

One other consideration is that there might be a tendency to take more risks if you have limited funds. This doesn't actually increase the average return for the group but it would make the distribution more bi-modal.

Another thing not accounted for is time to find such opportunities. With a smaller investment, you are spending a greater percentage of your time relative to the value of your investment finding this. Another additional factor is that some investments require minimum investments and simply are not available for smaller investors.

Sure, I can go to garage sales and find something I could resell for $10 and buy it for $1, so I guess in that case, lower investments have an "advantage", but I spend $10 in effort to find it, it's not really much of an advantage.

A lot of people don't have wealth in the country because it is not economic to have wealth. you have to have insurance you have to pay more property taxes, you lose food stamps, SSDI, low phone rates, you lose Obamacare and Medicare, you get free long-term care, if you are unmarried you get welfare and child support from the government. You get free college grants. Furthermore, you can't get sued.

Here is CalGrant.

Have financial need based on your college costs
Have family income and assets below the established ceilings

http://www.csac.ca.gov/facts/2015-16...applicants.pdf

http://admission.universityofcalifor...blue-and-gold/

Based on reading the above, your tuition is paid for in California for UC.

Suppose this amounts to $30,000 a year. Multiply by 50 years and you have $1,500,000 in wealth for not having anything.

Multiply $1,500,000 *100,000,000 people = $150 trillion in equivalent wealth by the bottom 50%.

Furthermore if you go to prison or your husband goes to prison you can get even more. End up in Detroit and pay no property tax at all.

Furthermore you got guys like Sam Walton and Buffett that drive around in old pickup trucks that leak oil and 50 year old houses that are falling apart and plan on donating 95%+ of their wealth away after they die.

I work with a guy who is a federal employee and is pretty open about his situation.

He made about 45k in 2014, he's a fairly new employee and recently went from a part time temp to a full salary full time employee.

He's married and has 4 kids. He gets government housing, food stamps and his kids are all on medicaid.

He got a 9700 tax refund and only paid in about 4100.

He and his wife have no health insurance, he said he ran the numbers and it's cheaper to pay the fine for no insurance. His wife is now pregnant.

He tried to get her on medicaid but got denied, makes too much money.

He is actively trying to work no OT and get his check as low as possible to get her on medicaid.

He's also buying a motorcycle and his wife posted on FB the 3 tattoos she plans on getting with their income tax refund.

Wealth != account balances

Wealth is already incredibly distributed. It is not as if billionaires have an iphone that cost $200k and everyone is still stuck with a rotary phone.

People just hate the fact that we have never been more equal in human history than this very moment. It is a boring idea with no sex appeal and nothing to discuss.

Lamborghini phone will cost you $6,000
http://www.androidcentral.com/lambor...-cost-you-6000

Absolute wealth != relative wealth.

We are at a time where absolute wealth is high compared to the past, but that isn't what we are talking about.

(also, please everyone stop saying reversal instead of reversion)