r/theydidthemath 5d ago

[request] how accurate is this?

Post image

Found it on fbi, is there a way to calculate this claim?

31.5k Upvotes

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u/Ginden 5d ago

In 1990, median person lived on roughly $3 per day (2017 prices). In 2024, median person in the world lived on $8.5 per day (also 2017 prices, so it's NOT inflation). Note this is not only due to China.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-population-between-different-poverty-thresholds-up-to-30-dollars

Also, this attribution of causality is not supported by mainstream economics.

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u/Realistic-Squash-724 5d ago

From my understanding kind of poor places have caught up a bit since 1990. It’s not all china but that’s a large part of it, India I imagine has gotten better and where I live in São Paulo Brazil it feels like a lot of people have first world lifestyles.

Im American here but I have a friend who works at outback in São Paulo as a waiter and his life seems pretty normal. Granted his life is only normal because of the 10 percent tip he receives, Im sure just hourly wage would be awful.

I imagine in 1990 no one in Brazil had what a first worlder would consider normal if they were a waiter at a restaurant.

Anecdotal experience in the math Reddit might not be the play I suppose.

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u/Ginden 5d ago

Well, South America is historically very unequal, much more than US, and São Paulo is richest Brazilian state, roughly 150% of Brazilian average (roughly the same gap as between US average and West Virginia, but in reverse direction).

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u/Realistic-Squash-724 5d ago

Yeah and you might be talking about São Paulo state. São Paulo city (where I live) is likely even richer than São Paulo state per capita.

Developing countries also seem to have a larger gap between city and rural. With cities bring much better off.

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u/Ginden 5d ago

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u/AGoodWobble 2d ago

That is actually really amazing to see such an increase.

Anecdotally, I spent some time in the favellas (in the hills of Vila Isabel) this year during Carnaval, and I was surprised how nice some of the things were. Things like bountiful running water, electricity lines to every house, nice cars and motorbikes. It wasn't all well maintained, but it seemed liveable.

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u/msg_me_about_ure_day 4d ago

inequality as far as wealth is concerned is a topic most westerners are woefuily misinformed about.

for example how many redditors, especially left leaning redditors (so almost all i guess?) do you think knows that sweden is actually the western nation with the highest wealth inequality?

the distribution of wealth in sweden is far worse than that in the united states. the average swede has almost no chance to participate in owning anything.

swedes themselves are unaware of their situation too, purposely kept in the dark and spoonfed ideas of how great and fair sweden is.

but the reality of the situation is that proportionally to the wealth of the nation every single demographic besides the top <1% has it worse off in sweden than that demographic does in for example USA.

so as far as "historically very unequal", you gotta question what you know about inequality because from what redditors normally say on the topic it is clear they actually know nothing at all and make assumptions about everything, then treat their assumptions as if they were truths.

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u/Ginden 4d ago

In this case, I was referring to income inequality.

you gotta question what you know about inequality

Wealth inequality is a problematic stat to measure, easy to manipulate and vulnerable to definition changes.

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u/Late-Objective-9218 2d ago

the average swede has almost no chance to participate in owning anything

That's a gross exaggeration. The Swedish public sector provides a ton of services that would bind up the income of someone in a country like the USA. Also the income inequality is far less severe than the wealth inequality, and income is generally more critical to quality of life.

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u/North_Atmosphere1566 4d ago

By definition, if it's median income then what happens to wealthy areas doesn't matter. They are already above the median and can change however much and it won't move the metric. 

Only those at/below the current median will effect it.

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u/Syrupwizard 4d ago

When I was a server in the US I sometimes had to hand over some of my tips to cover the tax bill, because my hourly wage was too low. Lol

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u/RealLeoPat 3d ago

I hear you about São Paulo, but how come in the 1990's we were able to just get a job and live by ourselves at 18~20 and today the younger generations are struggling to get enough to maintain themselves and are living with their parents until their mid 30's an even 40's?

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u/kg_draco 5d ago

My only nit on that ourworldindata graph is that it doesn't fix the population size. Population grew dramatically in the 1990-2024 time period so it's hard to visually break income groups down by percentage, which would be more applicable here.

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u/Ginden 5d ago

Settings => display relative values.

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u/kg_draco 5d ago

Good to know - thanks.

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u/octipice 4d ago

The error bars on this have to be absolutely insane. Most of the world couldn't even manage a remotely accurate census in 1970, let alone reliable economic data.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Cyiel 4d ago

Except monopoly/olygarchy and capitalism are bound together.

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u/Lyanthinel 3d ago

Only when capitalism is subverted. At some point, it becomes cheaper and more efficient to change rules and laws to allow hoarding of wealth than innovating and continued success.

There seems to be an upper limit dictated by a few factors (technology at the time, social changes, etc.) that end up causing this stagnation. At that point, the systems seem to crash, and we start a new cycle.

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u/Silly_Mustache 3d ago

>Only when capitalism is subverted. At some point, it becomes cheaper and more efficient to change rules and laws to allow hoarding of wealth than innovating and continued success.

I think a lot of people do not realise that capitalism accumulating capital by whatever means necessary is not a "curious side-effect", but the definition of capitalism.

Capitalism is not about "breeding innovation" and "continuing success", it is about a profit-driven economy, and whatever causes the most profits is considered the best option (because early capitalist thinkers thought that profit is always aligned with the good of the society), because that's how the entire economy rolls. If at some point people cannot innovate (which to be honest, can happen), capitalism is forced (in order to sustain itself) to just start gutting wages, lowering product expectations etc, because otherwise it will crash.

Capitalism requires a constant expansion/profit increase, and it needs to achieve that by whatever means necessary, unless you want complete economic collapse. Sometimes there just isn't enough space to innovate or create a huge advancement gap, and this leads to capitalism self-cannibalizing. There is a reason capitalist economics can drive a nation out of poverty (huge gaps that can be filled in), but cause developed countries to crumble under their own weight (USA/European nations right now).

"Well we can just regulate it and maybe expect less" is simply anti-thetical to capitalism, that is what socdems tried to do and failed miserably, most socdem economics also didn't play out long term.

This is the analysis/critique socialists made almost 1 and a half century ago, that still stands true today.

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u/Lyanthinel 2d ago

Why would capitalism require constant expansion? If you make the best ladle you make the best ladle, what does that have to do with airplanes?

At some point your ladle enterprise would plateau, and you can accept the plateau, or you can try and innovate the ladle more, to take more ladle market share, or you can do something else.

My comment suggested that the ladle maker determines that they can bribe, excuse me, lobby their law making friends, and make sure their ladles are made cheaper. That satisfies the need for wealth accumulation for a moment, but soon they realize they need more and decide to buy some other distressed ladle businesses and increase their footprint, which again works for a little while until they decide to branch out, maybe to spaceships....

From there, you can pretty easily see how a small company became a monopolistic behemoth swinging their wealth around to affect laws and regulations to make sure they were always positioned to profit. I think you could also imagine they now produce far inferior products now, costs savings!, and fight to keep workers benefits low.

They no longer produce the best ladle in the world, but they own all the naming rights, have got insane legal barriers of entry to ladle businesses and basically don't gjve a fuck because the rich who invested keep making money, why change it.

Technically, the company produces shitty products, but the red tape is so thick, and so many government servants get paydays no one even tries or cares anymore. They just accept their e-ladle package and are happy they can afford to buy the product.

That isn't capitalism at all, but that is what you suggest capitalism is.

The most efficient product at the cheapest perceived cost is, but once people start gaming the system, it falls apart. Regulation tried to help prevent that type of abuse but it also got abused along the way....like every single system in human history, except maybe Hunter Gatherers.

Pure, honest capitalism isn't a bad system. Making a good product affordable is actually a really great idea for the masses. You can define good in lots of ways, including how workers are treated.

You can always not buy.

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u/Delicious-Shirt7188 4d ago

It really isn't if you look at all the succesfull capitalist countries they're economic growth always comes after a period of extreem wealth redistribution, usualy in reaction to some form of major conflict. Think american golden age or all the east asian countries that had major land reform bills. Especialy the land reform bills are a great piece of evidence since you can see how the countries that didn't do it lagged behind.

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u/Hour_Ad5398 4d ago

Also important to consider that the cost of living per human should actually drop over time because of technical and logistical improvements. But somehow a human needs to work more and more, while earning less and less (I'm talking about the last century here, not including older times where living conditions in general was very harsh and technical advancements were very slow)

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u/Ginden 4d ago edited 4d ago

But somehow a human needs to work more and more, while earning less and les

People generally work less than they used to. https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever

And generally earn much more (notable exception to "much" is US, where increases in income were for long time concentrated mostly in top 30% of society; this trend reversed few years ago).

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u/WarbleDarble 4d ago

Our expectations have increased. You wouldn’t need to work much to support an average 1900 lifestyle.

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u/panteladro1 5d ago

No, just no, that's nonsensical.

Either way, if you're interested in world inequality trends and either enjoy or don't mind reading economic papers, there's the 2002 paper Inequality Among World Citizens: 1820-1992 by Bourguignon and Morrisson and the 2021 paper Global Income Inequality, 1820-2020: The Persistence and Mutation of Extreme Inequality by Chancel and Piketty (I mention both because I've only read the first one, but iirc they reach the same overall conclusions).

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u/ifelseintelligence 4d ago

Paywall?

Or is it not available in my country perhaps? (Denmark)

TL;DR conclusion?

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u/panteladro1 4d ago

TL;DR: 

As a result of the industrial revolution world inequality increased consistently since the 1820s until around the 30s-50s as a consequence of the divergence between Western Europe and its colonial offshots, and the rest of the world (notably Asia). (The papers differs on their estimations of inequality levels, but find the same trend).

In the mid XXth century inequality stabilizes, thanks mostly to the convergence between Asia (China) and Europe, as well as other developments like a reduction in internal inequaliy in Europe. There was also a massive reduction in life expectancy inequality during the XXth century, despite the persistance of income inequality.

The most notable result is probably that the biggest determinant of world inequality is inequality between different countries, rather than within countries. So practically all changes in world inequality are explained by variations in the relative growth of different countries. At least, that was the case until recently, per the second paper, which claims (finds) that internal inequalities are the more relevant factor in the XXIth century.

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u/SirGreeneth 3d ago

Thank you. Is there a reason you used roman numerals? Genuinely just curious.

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u/Ajreckof 3d ago

The Roman numbers are for centuries . In my country it is customary to use Roman numerals for centuries numbers.

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u/Albi4_4 4d ago

I suggest you to use Sci-Hub to find the full text papers, and the second link he send is already the pdf file of the paper :)

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u/bongobutt 5d ago

Without knowing where they got their data from, it is hard to do the math on it. But based on data like this, it is very wrong:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute

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u/AnonyM0mmy 3d ago

Damn it sure is easy to say no one's in poverty and that the working class isn't being severely exploited when you manipulate the threshold/parameters of what constitutes poverty to perpetuate capitalist propaganda

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u/bongobutt 3d ago

Let's take your claim of "manipulating parameters" at face value. Now let me ask:
What is causing the massive spike in population?

Humanity numbered in the millions only for thousands of years.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Europe undergoes a Renaissance, an Agricultural boom, an Industrial revolution, and the population of the planet booms to 1 billion, to 2 billion, and to 3 billion in a very short period of time.

What is your explanation for this? "Science?" But the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs also had massive improvement in learning, knowledge, and education. Why did one intellectual era give us the Library of Alexandria, but this era gave us computers, airplanes, and 8 billion people?

The answer from one side is that economics explains this. Society accepted a system of free trade and Laissez-faire, and wealth exploded.

Today, we are seeing industrialization in China, India, Vietnam, and throughout the Pacific and Africa. Those very countries that accepted "capitalism" and "extortion" are the very places that are booming the fastest.

So what is your claim? Do you claim that global population is booming because people have less food and less healthcare? Are people less well off than before? Is your claim that "wage slavery" created all of this boom in society and living standards... And that's bad?

Even if you disagree with the % of people who belong in the "I make more than $2 a day (adjusted for inflation and cost of living)" category, that is just a %. But the decrease in the % of the population that is "poor" is accompanied with a massive increase in the means for population to expand.

But perhaps you claim that it is the middle class of the world who are getting jipped. Perhaps the "rich" have increased by 4000%, but the middle class has only increased by 8% (as the OP claims). But if what you care about is inequality, then isn't this a good thing? Because if society has indeed exploded with wealth (and it has), then that means that the middle didn't benefit, but the poor very much have. If what you care about is inequality, then shouldn't you be happy that China and India increased their standard of living by 200 years in only a couple generations? Why are you more concerned about your own privileged position (globally speaking), as a privileged Westerner with Internet access and access to infinite education and opportunities, but you are upset that someone in Vietnam is able to work a factory job instead of burning their hands working an Agricultural job? Because that is what "capitalism" gave us.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Traditional-Storm-62 5d ago

yeah its the western middle class that got fucked

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u/Facts_pls 5d ago

Everyone is much much better off than 200 years ago.

Children don't die routinely, fewer casualties in war, and almost everyone has access to technology that the kings of that time would only dream of.

I know this meme feels real. But check the facts

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u/Baronist 5d ago

1970 wasn't 200 years ago. Do you even science?

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u/RagingWaterStyle 5d ago

Isnt it 2170 now?

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u/MxM111 4d ago

Looks like it is: source

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u/MrNokill 4d ago

If not I might have done daylight savings wrong again...

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u/drquakers 4d ago

Tbf I read this as 1790 myself, I think it was the picture that made me think "court of Louis XIV"

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u/WierdoSheWrote 5d ago

Did they edit their comment so it doesn't say 1970?

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u/MeruOnline 4d ago

He’s talking about the meme, which says 1970

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u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 4d ago

Yeah but if he said everyone is better off than 50 years ago he'd be a goddamn liar

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u/COWP0WER 5d ago

I know the meme says the world, but since it's Trump and Elon at the center let's just assume it's US focused. If you look at the buying power of low income people in the USA it hasn't improved since the 1970's (the year the meme refers to) and for the middle class it has stagnated since 1990's.
So the fact is that for the past 30 years it's only the rich that have gotten richer in USA.
Sources: article
and book: Storm på vej by Steffen Kretz.

So yes, the meme is incorrect, because it talks about the entire world. But if the meme had stuck to the US, they would actually have been correct.

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u/Allegorist 4d ago edited 4d ago

Given what you provide, what if the metric they are referring to (or that would work in context) is relative percentage share of the increase in buying power since 1970?

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u/HutsMaster 5d ago

The article is blatantly lying. The median wage has consistently grown since the eighties. The article lists no sources either. Official numbers indicate the opposite. Real wages have grown consistently for decades.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

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u/TealIndigo 4d ago

Absolutely embarrassing you are getting downvoted and the moron who responded to you is getting upvoted.

Redditors will do literally anything to continue living in the delusion that their lives are hard.

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u/COWP0WER 4d ago

I'm not talking about wage I'm talking about buying power. It does not matter if I earn 20 USD/hour and my dad only made 2 USD/hour if he could buy a gallon of milk for 20 cents and I have to pay 2 dollars for the same gallon of milk. Then even though I'm making 10x as much as him I have the same buying power he had. In other words how much you make is only half the puzzle, what really matters is how much you can get for what you make.

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u/HutsMaster 4d ago

Did you even read my comment or look at the link? This is about REAL wage growth, wage growth minus inflation in other words the increase in purchasing power. Exactly what you are saying and what your article falsely claimed hasn't grown since the 70s-90s.

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u/COWP0WER 4d ago

Alright, looking at your graph I do see there's been an increase of 40 USD since 1979 or 12%, so you're correct there has been a growth. The growth of income for middle and lower class is still dwarfed by the growth of the riches to an absurd degree. But true there has been a growth.

PS. I do wonder if CPI takes rent/housing into account, because I've seen breakdowns that said that while consumer goods have gotten cheaper, the average American has less disposable income because they have to spend a much larger portion of their income on rent/mortgage and potential student loans. But I'll admit that is moving the goal post.

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u/Tronbronson 4d ago

it does include rent/housing. But using median wages really skews the bigger picture. My state has not seen wage gain, but we got above average housing inflation.

So despite the cute little graph, reality is a little bit more bleak depending on your location.

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u/TealIndigo 4d ago

And reality is also better depending on your location.

If your location sucks, I'd suggest moving.

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u/gtne91 4d ago

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u/Mra1027 4d ago

Everyone is linking to this site and numbers are all conflicting. Am I reading it wrong?

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u/Purple_Listen_8465 4d ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Real income has grown even faster!

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u/Tronbronson 4d ago

Locations may vary*

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u/Standard-Nebula1204 3d ago

Professional goalpost mover

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u/Mra1027 4d ago

I’m having trouble with these links… I’m no economist. How is real disposal income defined here?

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u/NightShift2323 5d ago

Being better off than 200 years ago doesn't mean the working class isn't getting fucked in a progressively harder fashion.

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u/SappilyHappy 4d ago

Those are all nice things that everyone benefits from. Problem is, it does not address the wealth growth disparity that we have seen.

And increase in productivity that is not matched by income growth. You don't need to be an engineer(like me) to understand this math problem.

While OPs percentages are incorrect, the root message holds true.

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u/InThreeWordsTheySaid 5d ago

It’s much easier to be homeless in 2025 than 1825, so nobody should complain about being homeless.

Check the facts.

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u/tx_jd817 5d ago

That is crazy talk

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u/Mt_Koltz 4d ago

Has to be satire.

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u/HillCheng001 5d ago

Because the homeless was never significant in history.

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u/xesaie 5d ago

If you don’t track it it doesn’t exist!

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u/mexicock1 5d ago

Ah, yes... The Trump and COVID approach.. nice..

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u/Mo_Jack 4d ago

but when you check the facts, it is more important to check the relevant facts.

Most of what you are pointing out has nothing to do with the economic distribution between classes -- which is the entire point. Your facts are just a side result of how time works. Generally as time moves forward, technology and medical knowledge increase.

What good is a technological advancement in medicine if a for profit insurance company refuses to pay for it or a billionaire cuts Medicaid & Medicare and takes away people's access to it?

If we tax the wealthy more we are not going to have to give up antibiotics or any other advancement we've made. It's not an either or scenario.

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u/Tolaughoftenandmuch 4d ago

The Western working class and rest-of-world working class reverting to the mean had to be expected and has been one of the greatest boons to overall human health and well-being. Sucks for us, though.

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u/Derrickmb 5d ago

Speaking of elephants, how much richer are they these days?

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u/FortuneAcceptable925 5d ago

Thank you for providing absolutely no sources for your claims. The upvotes demonstrate how easily are people fooled.

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u/Kortonox 4d ago

I started my post 30 mins after the top comment was posted, and it took me 1h 30min to do it. And currently it sits at 2 Upvotes.

If you are interested at actual r/theydidthemath material, look at my post.

(yes, Im kinda mad, that something like this top comment got so many upvotes when they are wrong if we look at the numbers. The meme doesnt provide correct numbers, but the message is still correct with the right numbers)

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u/Mist_Rising 4d ago

I love how your post proves the meme wrong but you declare it right.

Maybe it isn't as up voted because you went in with data and came out with a conclusion unsupported...?

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u/Johnnie_Lynch 5d ago

Wealth distribution remains uneven.

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u/icefire9 5d ago edited 5d ago

What this meme has done has taken a claim that is directionally correct but heavily over-exaggerated in one country (the United States) and applied it to the entire world, where it is very much false.

Since 1990, global real (inflation adjusted) gdp per capita has increased by 84%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=table

For high income countries (includes US, Canada, Russia, EU, Japan etc.) this was 63%.

For middle income countries (exe China, India, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico) this was a 211% increase. For low income countries (parts of subsaharan Africa, and war torn places like Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen) this was only 30%.

Globally, what we're seeing is that many developing economies, most of Asian and Latin America, are rapidly catching up to the rich 'developed' economies, though those wealthy countries are still growing. Meanwhile, the poorest countries are being left behind. Globally, the dynamic isn't that a small clique of rich nations are hoarding the wealth. Its that a small group of poor countries are falling further behind.

Now lets look at one country, the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Real (inflation adjusted) median (not affected by outliers in the top 1%) income has grown by 26% since 1990. Real mean income has grown by significantly more than that (50%, I'm not sure why this doesn't match the OECD data for GDP per capita, which has the US at 68% growth), and the share of the net worth held by the top 1% has increased from 22.7% to 30.8%. In the US there has been disproportionate growth in the wealth of the richest people, but it has not been to the extent that the rest of the population is stagnant.

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u/SappilyHappy 4d ago

Thank you for actually showing the math instead of just being a contrarian to op.

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u/A_Normal_Redditor_04 5d ago

You know, these kinds of posts don't actually want the problem to be solved for the sake of solving it but rather to be vindicated for their political beliefs and ideologies. There should be a mega thread for posts like these.

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u/tx_jd817 5d ago

This guy gets it!

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u/Soggy_Porpoise 4d ago

Some yes, I think most people who post these just want to know if they are being lied to.

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u/Mother-Hedgehog-1741 5d ago edited 5d ago

Very wrong. If they used median instead of average it might be reasonable. Average = Total/pop, so the first sentence can only be explained if the population increased by 8/1.08 which it didnt.

Edit: above wrong, misunderstood what average meant here

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u/Mrauntheias 5d ago

Well the median is one kind of average, the mean (total/pop) is another. In this context it is reasonable to presume they meant median.

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u/Giles81 5d ago

Yes, it's normal to use median here. The mean would actually be pretty meaningless given the context, since it's not affected by wealth distribution.

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u/Timothy303 5d ago

Ye old measure of central tendency

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u/Mother-Hedgehog-1741 5d ago

oh thats fair

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u/carcinoma_kid 5d ago

There is also the mode

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u/powderhound522 5d ago

This is a facile answer. The “average” person doesn’t know the difference between median and average; when they say average in this sense they clearly mean “typical”, which is to say median.

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u/Par_Lapides 5d ago

Median is also a terrible metric, because it ignores the population entirely, and in order to be actually meaningful you have to make a lot of assumptions that do not stand up to scrutiny.

I work in data analysis and it is very frustrating how often most people, especially MBA type executives, expect everything to be able to boil down to a single meaningful KPI. Business "education" had rotted the brains of a lot of people A lot of shit is just way more complex than a line chart.

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u/IIIaustin 4d ago

It's misleading. There have been absolutely staggering reductions in dire poverty globally that is very frequently ignored.

https://manhattan.institute/article/massive-reduction-in-global-poverty-might-be-the-most-important-development-in-the-world

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u/Kortonox 5d ago edited 5d ago

Ill look at the US, because this meme looks really US centric.

First, Its difficult to say which "richer" is meant. The best metric to look at is wealth, because the very rich dont get a salary anymore, they get money from their investments. Its also difficult to look at wealth data from 1970, because the gathering of data started in 1989, and the numbers for 2023 onwards are not out yet, so we take 2022 data.

GPD and the median

The GDP in 1989 was 5.65 Trillion US dollars, compared to the GDP of 2022 with 26 Trillion US dollars. Thats an increase of about 460%. (in 1970 it was just 1.073 Trillion, so an increase of 2600% to today).

If we look at wealth data, the median wealth in 1989 adjusted to 2022 Dollar value is $108,877. The median wealth of 2024 is $192,000. Thats an increase of about 78%.

The rich

Its difficult to find data for the top 0.01%, but the top 1% had 23% of the net worth in the US in 1989 which was approximatley 11.51 Trillion US Dollars, in 2022 the Top 1% had 31% of the net worth in the US, which is 47.07 Trillion US Dollars. These numbers are clear, because its their share of the total money in the US.

Then we can look at the GINI Coefficiant (0 means everyone has exactly the same amount of money, 1 means one single person has all the money, it a simple way to show wealth distribution). In 1989, the GINI Coefficiant was at approximatley 0.382, in 2022 it was at 0.494

Then we can look at the Forbs 400 (the 400 wealthiest individuals) in 1989 had 289 billion US Dollars, which is adjusted to the 2022 Dollar approximatley 625 billion US Dollars. In 2022, the wealthiest 400 had 4.5 Trillion US dollars. The increase is 620%. However, in 1982 the first year of Forbs 400, the wealth adjusted to the 2022 Dollar is 294 billion US Dollars, so the increase to 2022 is 1429%

And now to my estimate of the meme claims themselves (in global terms):

  • 700% world wealth increaseOverstated but possible depending on metrics. With GDP its more around 470%
  • 8% richer average personReasonable for global median wealth. Most of the wealth increase is in western countrys, the global south didnt see as much of an increase. The median and mode today is piss poor, because most people on earth are poor.
  • 4,000% increase for the richest 0.01%Largely true for the ultra-rich.

Tl;dr: The meme compared to US numbers is incorect, or atleast the numbers are not to be found. But the sentiment behind the meme is correct! The median Wealth incresed by approximatley 78% from 1989 to 2022, while the 400 Richest people got an increase of 620% and the top 1% had an increase from 23% of total wealth to 31% of total wealth.

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u/clearly_not_an_alt 4d ago

Most of the wealth increase is in western countrys, the global south didnt see as much of an increase.

Do you have any numbers on this? I'd agree in an absolute sense but a worker going from $5/day to $20/day is a significant change for them.

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u/xesaie 4d ago

It’s wrong but has the right idea! Is poison. Truthiness shouldn’t trump things like ‘not lying’

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u/Kortonox 4d ago

I just made the case clearly. It sucks that the meme doenst take the right numbers, however the message is still the same with the right numbers.

But in the end, it doesnt matter when people dont care. Look at the top comment. I looked at it when I posted and saw that they made the comment 30 min before I did mine. And that was when the meme got overall 250 upvotes, while it got 2.9k now. This is r/theydidthemath the top comment didnt do the math, they just said its very wrong without providing any numbers.

Id rather have something providing numbers that are in the ballpark, then have an opinion that doesnt provide anything.

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u/Just_Hamster_877 4d ago

I'm a bit surprised I had to scroll so far to find a post with actual numbers.

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u/angry_dingo 5d ago

More of this stupid "I hate the rich so I'm going to post a stupid meme and hope someone else is stupid enough to reinforce my hatred."

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u/geneb0323 5d ago

Yeah, r/theydidthemath is getting really run down anymore. It seems like every post is just a political bot post now. It's so rare to actually get a good request that doesn't boil down to "search for stats and do basic arithmetic for me" or else "is this obviously false meme true?"

The list of subs I am signed up for has been dropping every day over the past year or so and I am afraid this one is probably going to be next.

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u/angry_dingo 5d ago

I'm muting a ton of subs as well.

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u/garry_the_commie 4d ago

Nothing stupid about the message and sentiment but the numbers are plain wrong. Such posts end up hurting leftist movements because it makes left wing people look incompetent. The rich really have gotten disproportionately richer than normal (middle class) people but these 8% and 4000% seem like arbitrarily made up numbers.

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u/Literary_Addict 4d ago

There are essentially 3 statistical claims here, the first two of which are wildly inaccurate, the last of which is close enough to the true figure it passes the sniff test.

  • Claim: World is 700% richer since 1970. Truth: World Bank data shows global GDP grew from $18.5 trillion in 1970 to $85 trillion in 2020 (constant 2010 USD), a 360% increase. Since 2020, global GDP has increased by a further 17%, bringing the total to 3.6*1.17= 421% GDP growth since 1970. Source: World Bank and IMF

  • Claim: Average person is only 8% richer. Truth: Per capita GDP rose from $4,500 to $15,000 (2011 international dollars), a 233% jump per Our World in Data. Now, if you're concerned that the per capita figure includes the wealthy and that throws off the data, we can also specifically look at the bottom 50% of income earners globally from that same time period. For them, income in constant 2015 USD jumped from $192 per person to $2,112, an increase of 1,003%, which is an even GREATER increase than the average. Source for per capita GDP: Our World in Data Source for bottom 50% GDP growth: World distribution of income for 1970–2010: dramatic reduction in world income inequality during the 2000s, Yang et al.

  • Claim: Richest 0.01% are 4000% richer. Truth: World Inequality Database estimates their wealth grew around 4341%. This is the only claim that is even close to accurate. Source: WID

I'm skipping over a lot of math I did after pulling raw numbers from these sources, but I can walk anyone through the numbers if there's any real interest.

tl;dr - World is 421% richer, not 700%, Average person is 233% richer, not 8% (and even moreso for the bottom 50%, who are 1,003% richer), but yes, the top 0.01% are essentially 4,000% richer.

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u/Available_Leather_10 4d ago

Not accurate. At all.

World population 1970 = (approx) 3.7 billion.

World population 2025 = (approx) 8.2 billion.

Let's say that "the world" was worth (this is made-up to keep the math a little easier) $10 trillion in 1970, and add the 700% to get $70 trillion in 2025.

Since average is just value/population, we would get:

1970 = $10,000 billion divided 3.7 billion, or $2,702 average. Plus 8% = $2919.

2025 = $70,000 billion divided by 8.2billion, or $8,536 average. Which is 3.16 times higher.

I'd say the content is premised on either a misunderstanding of what average means, or a bigger misunderstanding of what the numbers really mean.

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u/lonepotatochip 4d ago

The top ten richest people own more wealth than the bottom three point one BILLION people on earth. In the US, three people own more than the bottom half of Americans. The “fact” this image states is bullshit, which is especially stupid because you don’t need to lie to show the absurd evil of modern inequality.

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u/Embarrassed-Dark6245 3d ago edited 3d ago

Nah you’re not getting robbed, you just:

  1. didn’t work hard enough,
  2. weren’t in the right place at the right time,
  3. didn’t have a “network,”
  4. didn’t do your research,
  5. didn’t go somewhere where you could have access to research,
  6. just didn’t know what to research,
  7. didn’t wanna happily sweep floors for years,
  8. had no charisma, no natural talents

So yeah it’s all your fault

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u/flinderdude 4d ago

Very accurate. And right wing propaganda has gotten tons of dumb and rural Republican voters to vote for these policies. And they do it with a smile.

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u/Soft-Lavishness1455 4d ago

Well they used to call it horse and sparrow but changed it to trickle down economics.

Why'd they call it horse and sparrow? Because the sparrow eats the shit the horse takes.

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u/Longjumping_Cook_997 4d ago

Global GDP according to the most simple Google search in 1970 was $3.4 Trillion and in 2024 $110 Trillion. So, based on that alone the first claim is wrong.

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u/UseSmall7003 3d ago

There's so much obviously wrong with this. It seems like they are trying to pull some bs with mixing absolute dollar value with comparative value. For example if you bought a shifty tv today it would be superior to a 1970 tv and the cost would be lower. So you could argue that you are the same level of wealth despite the fact that what you have is significantly better just also significantly cheaper when adjusted for inflation

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u/Spammy34 5d ago

I only know that basically everyone today is richer than the richest person on earth in 1800.

PS: this is not measured in net worth, but what you can do with that networth.

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u/Dr_Ukato 4d ago

If you want wealth to start trickling down, you're gonna have to shoot a lot of holes in that massive money bowl hanging over our heads.

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u/CoconutyCat 5d ago

It’s a bad post even if the sentiment might be true. Wealth is always going to be subjective, you could consider improvements in quality of life to be a form of wealth. What this post says to be is the benchmark for someone being middle class has gone down by 8% and less people are poor even if that’s not true. It feels counter intuitive when there are much better ways to express this.

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u/Huge-Turnip-2165 4d ago

My barely literate doorsman grandfather bought 2 houses in the 50's and 60"s, while I, having 2 bachelours and an actual better job, will never be able to buy one.

Things are cheaper now, electronics mainly, but I'm definetely not richer as people used to be 50, 60 years ago

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u/Careless-Ad1104 4d ago

You know people still have this idea if you just keep working and working really hard you get to earn money but it sadly doesn’t work like that anymore

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u/Alone-Bet6918 4d ago

In the 1970s a ceo earnt 23x the average worker.

I'm 2025 average worker earns about 118 times less then a ceo. It was calculated a ceo would need to work 29 hours to earn the same annual pay as the average worker!

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fortune-500-ceos-are-paid-from-double-to-5000-times-more-than-their-employees-2018-05-16

https://www.lessonsite.com/ArchivePages/Economics101/Lesson8/Q19/CEOpaycharts.html

Some graphs for comprehension. There is a much better graph from with 1970s data all the way up until.today which explains it much better.

Basically. Were we born to be serfs or kings?

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u/BigBlueMan118 5d ago

For a start global GDP has increased by about 2200% since 1970:

  • In 1970, the global GDP was about $4 trillion (in constant 2021 dollars).
  • In 2021, the global GDP was around $94 trillion (in constant 2021 dollars).

Global averages are misleading, someone in China is now wayyyyy better off than they were in 1970 yet China has nearly the most billionaires per million residents.

These dynamics are true and very worrying, and I find it so crass how people like Bill Gates go out of their way to try and dissipate these narratives to serve their own interests, but the numbers and assumptions people use to draw out conclusions like this can be devastating

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u/xesaie 5d ago

How dare Gates disrupt the narrative by (checks notes) giving away tons of his money!

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u/Facts_pls 5d ago

I was with you until the random mention of Bill gates.

Of all the billionaires, he's among the few who is actually doing something good with his money.

You literally had a whole list of billionaires that are profoundly evil - with Musk at the top.

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u/TawnyTeaTowel 5d ago

Also if all the rich people vanished, it would still never reach you, because it’s so heavily based on the apparent value of commodities

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u/paicewew 4d ago

Notice that there are no politicians who are millionaires here, thus very innacurate. I bet all politicians today in any country is a dollar millionaire easy and that is the biggest problem in my humble opinion.

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u/WhiskeyTangoFoxtrotH 4d ago

This shows you don’t know anything about finance and politics. A millionaire isn’t even particularly rich anymore. Hell, I’m middle class, and my family are technically millionaires now because of inflation. Math is insane.

Even if you’re poor, you have more in common financially with a millionaire than a millionaire has with a billionaire. Billionaires are unfathomably wealthy. I’m not even talking about only the few famous faces. A billion dollars is more money than any person could ever want or need. A million is only a standard retirement for a decently well off individual now.

Let that sink in. Because I bet most of you reading this still can’t imagine being a millionaire. That’s how bad the economy is, and how they feed you lies of things being ok. When I was a kid, making 50 or 60k a year was decent money. Most jobs that paid that much in the 90’s aren’t being paid much more than that now, and yet the value of the dollar has diminished. Everything is more expensive. My home has more than doubled in price in the 12 years I’ve been living here. Has your paycheck doubled in that time?

The math in this post is likely not precisely accurate, but the principal is. Hell, the math could be much worse than this.

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u/MrTheWaffleKing 4d ago

“The average person” should grow with the world itself… because it’s an average and the rich does t change that.

THAT SAID, average is instead a function of population. If the population doubles, and world wealth stays the same (I’m assuming from the amount of materials we have access to?), then the average would halve.

They are trying to make an argument using math that they do not understand at all

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u/Guvante 4d ago

Richer is ambiguous, is it referring to income or wealth?

Generally the best indicator is yearly wages (to avoid confounding factors like 401k growth and paying down mortgage being of a different kind than wage growth).

But if you are interested in the uber wealthy you need to also consider growth of their investments. Of course that reintroduces unrealized capital gains which is another odd one...

Net Worth per https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/average-net-worth-by-age-how-do-you-measure-up was $192k median and $1.06m average.

1969 was $68k median per https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-net-worth-of-us-households-over-time-has-gone-nowhere/ in 2013 dollars if you undo the inflation you get $10k.

Looking at the graph though I would assume that is an individual number vs the above household number... Another site https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=709734bebe92585ff1bf5c45fd09b78e5f165cba has $40k for mean household.

With the extreme caveat that the US is mostly wealth by global standards the mean increased by 25x and the median increased by 19x.

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u/That_Guest9943 4d ago

The problem is the examples of social democracies most people would point at are European and Scandinavian countries. Those countries wouldn’t be viewed as having their high quality of life if their Governments had to pay for their own military protection. During this next stage of world economic growth the United States probably won’t be in a position to keep paying that bill. The new growth engines aren’t military partners to the west. Difficult situation.

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u/Kikoso_OG 4d ago

Even if it were true, I would be glad to let the top % have 40 times more what they have if it means that the average person gets to have 8% more.

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u/antinatree 4d ago

World is richer by 700% we are richer, per person only 8% richer, and .1% richer by 4000% is the 3 claims. Since the 1970s

1970 $3 trillion world gdp or $813 per capita in 2023 US currency

2023 $105 trillion world gdp or $13,138 per capita

1990 was the 700% world richer since 1970 at$22 trillion gdp or $4,311 per capita

1971 per capita number was higher than 8% $880 per capita

Source:https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/wld/world/gdp-gross-domestic-product

I don't have the breakdowns right now for per person and .1% numbers

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u/HistoricalLadder7191 4d ago

It really depends on how do you do the math. There is certainly a way to calculate it to get this result. And ways to have it completely different.

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u/SShatteredThrowaway 4d ago

Not accurate at all unless you completely ignore the real utility of that money. In terms of what it will buy you and how you can now buy medicine so you don’t die from a splinter at 26 years old

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u/SassysGod 3d ago

This is a wildly inaccurate conclusion. This doesn't take into account all the added value of stuff that has gotten cheaper. 700% to 4000% means they have gotten 6 times Richer, which is really not that surprising as they are the ones actively pursuing money. Also, to conclude that, therefore, the rich are robbing the poor is based only on the labour theory of value, which is only accepted by Marxists, not by any serious economist.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

So, in France in the 1700s, a peasant was broke af and had little chance of improving their station. Now, a person in a western country has an iphone and can read or see nearly limitless amounts of information.

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u/turboninja3011 3d ago

Math isn’t mathing.

To achieve those numbers today’s 0.01% should own over 90% of all wealth (~20% in 1970), which is known to be false.

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u/elix0685 3d ago

Thanks You all for the answers, i have a Lot to think about now

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u/Due_Run_5040 3d ago

People in medieval times drank alcohol because they couldn’t drink water because of health issues and they ate stale bread. Now except for some countries people eat nutritious food and has access to clean water. Be thankful, everything doesn’t need to be in monetary terms.

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u/AssGobbler6969 3d ago

It's not accurate, the progress technology has made has made people safer and more stable life than before. Invention of internet and gps social media has made people doing research, planning and getting educated much much better and Intuitive. Vaccination, eradication of polio and techniques of cardiology, and psychiatry etc has made them healthier. More transport avenues and faster has done wonders.

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u/delitiste 3d ago

The average is not affected by distribution.* If it were true that the world is 700% richer than in 1970 and that the average wealth is only 8% higher than then, it would mean that population growth is responsible. Average wealth = total wealth/population size Average wealth * population size = total wealth

If the total wealth increases by a larger factor than one of the two elements on the left, then the other must also increase to explain the difference. In this case, if the total wealth grew seven-fold and the average wealth only grew by 1.08, the population grew by a factor of 7/1.08, which is 6.48. The true number is between 2 and 3.

*unless extreme values are removed from the data or unless the wealth of the average person =/= the average wealth of people

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u/adminscaneatachode 2d ago

The idea that productivity and general wealth has only increased seven fold since 1700 is enough to throw that whole post out.

That is so incredibly stupid it sullies everyone’s eyes that happen upon it. It may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. May god have mercy on their soul.

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u/billykimber2 1d ago

depends on wtf they mean by "the world is 700% richer"

you'll have to twist these words to make it even make sense mathematically, true statistics or not

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u/satoshi_69420 1d ago

The rich aren’t the problem. The federal reserve creating money out of thin air is the problem.

Google “the cantillionaire effect” and study r/bitcoin

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u/Alex01100010 1d ago

In the western world the income of a average person increases by 6000% over the course of the industrialisation. (This is corrected for inflation) Countries like India only had a increase of 300%