{"id":3277,"date":"2013-03-04T13:43:23","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T18:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=3277"},"modified":"2013-03-04T13:43:23","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T18:43:23","slug":"what-does-it-take-to-be-rich-and-who-qualifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2013\/03\/04\/what-does-it-take-to-be-rich-and-who-qualifies\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it take to be rich&#8211;and who qualifies?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2013\/03\/wealth-inequality1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-3278\" title=\"wealth-inequality1\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2013\/03\/wealth-inequality1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2013\/03\/wealth-inequality1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2013\/03\/wealth-inequality1-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2013\/03\/wealth-inequality1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a>I grew up in a time when a millionaire was about as a rich as a person could be. And there weren&#8217;t many millionaires. Today, millionaires are hardly wealthy. Here&#8217;s a then\/now chart from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Millionaire\">an article on millionaires in Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Depending on how it is calculated, a million US dollars in 1900 is equivalent to 2006 US dollars of <sup id=\"cite_ref-13\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Millionaire#cite_note-13\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">[13]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">$24,766,584.77 using the <a title=\"Consumer price index\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Consumer_price_index\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Consumer price index<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">$21,224,697.05 using the <a title=\"GDP deflator\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/GDP_deflator\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">GDP deflator<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">$114,128,571.43 using the unskilled <a title=\"Wage\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wage\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">wage<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">$162,813,054.25 using the nominal <a title=\"Gross domestic product\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gross_domestic_product\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">GDP<\/span><\/a> per capita,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">$641,531,874.47 using the relative share of <a title=\"Gross domestic product\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gross_domestic_product\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">GDP<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Thus one would need to have a little over twenty million dollars today to have the <a title=\"Purchasing power\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Purchasing_power\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">purchasing power<\/span><\/a> of a US millionaire in 1900, or more than a hundred million dollars to have the same impact on the US economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Okay, but how many of &#8220;us&#8221; are really rich today? Here&#8217;s a look at the current division of wealth in our country from <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2013\/03\/02\/wealth-inequality\/http:\/\/\">Mashable.com<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QPKKQnijnsM?feature=player_embedded\" width=\"640\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But wait. How does this apply to rural communities? Well, I did a quick check of the <a href=\"http:\/\/factfinder2.census.gov\/faces\/tableservices\/jsf\/pages\/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_11_5YR_DP03\">US Census data from 2010<\/a> for St. Lawrence County and found that of the almost 42,000 households in the county, the mean annual income is about $54,000 and the median is about $43,400. Another way of looking at this data: more than half of these households (about 27,000) earn under $50,000&#8211;and about 12,000 of these households earn less than $25,000.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So, what does this mean: for our society, for our economy and political lives? This growing imbalance in the division of our national wealth&#8230;does it matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in a time when a millionaire was about as a rich as [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3279,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions\/3279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}