How everyone thinks wealth should be distributed in an ideal world
Where everyone still grows richer moving up the ladder, just not by absurd multiples.
A curve like this is roughly what 92% of people, globally, say they'd consider fair when asked to design a society from scratch.
scroll ↓
"But talent and hard work should still be paid more, right?"
then reality nudges in
This is what people BELIEVE THE CURRENT REALITY is.
this is the actual curve
Notice what happened to "poor" and "middle". They're now barely a sliver at the bottom. That's what the real curve does to every softer version of the story.
wealth in india — a reality check
1%
of Indians own 40% of everything this country has ever built.
If india's wealth was one ₹100 note
₹100
Split among 100 people. The total coins in each row is what that whole group collectively holds.
bottom 50% (50 people) → ₹6 total (₹0.12 each)
middle 40% (40 people) → ₹24 total (₹0.60 each) (5x the bottom 50%)
top 10% (10 people) → ₹70 total (₹7 each) (~55x the bottom 50% and ~11x the middle 40%)
it wasn't always like this
Share of national income captured by India's richest 1%.
In your grandparents' era: 6%. Today: 22.6%. This is the highest ever recorded, higher than under British colonial rule.
one rupee at a time
Remember the people asking for 70 Hour Work Weeks. How much wealth could they possibly have?
The biggest denomination note ever issued in India was the ₹10,000 note. We'll use it here as our unit.
= ₹10,000
If we look at the wealth amassed by just the few ultra rich vs what the rest of the population has, the contrast is staggering
≈ The abundance of wealth amassed by the top few (₹83,00,000 cr) combined, roughly 8.3 billion ten-thousand-rupee coins is too large to fit in this view. The 15,000 coins above are just 0.00018% of that pile.
To go further, we need bigger currencies
₹10,000
× 1,000 =
= ₹1 crore (India has never issued a real note this big)
15 of these ₹1 crore notes = all 15,000 of the ₹10,000 notes you just scrolled past, combined...
In other words, every single thing you just scrolled through, every checkpoint, every comparison, can be represented with just these 15 notes:
What all can you achieve with these ₹1 crore notes?
Each note here = ₹1 crore. Even at this much bigger scale, some things everyone's heard of don't fit on this page.
Even ₹1 crore notes aren't big enough for what's next
₹1 crore
× 100 =
= ₹100 crore
150 of these ₹100 crore notes = all 15,000 of the ₹1 crore notes you just scrolled past, combined.
Everything from the previous section, every checkpoint and every comparison, can be represented with just these 150 notes:
With such wealth, you can buy entire elections
Each note here = ₹100 crore. India's entire Union Budget (₹48,00,000 cr) would need 48,000 of these, more than 3× what fits on this page.