Anyone who thinks it was 10,000 years ago is a dunce.
There are great cave drawings back as far as 32,000 BCE so we know that it was at least somewhere around then.
Sheesh.

another triumph for "mainstream" Christianity!

While I'm not a Christian and don't believe in a personal God, it's absurd to bring religion into this.
And this fact misses one important number: what is the cost of living in those places compared to the US? If you make 50,000/US in North Carolina, you're pretty well off...50,000/US in Sweden may give you enough for one gram of smoked herring.

When adjusted for local purchasing power, you'll see a difference.

So strange (to me) to see so many countries where the median $ is higher than the average $.

I've just been living for so long in America where it's taken for granted that average income and average net worth are completely skewed and far above the median that it's almost inconceivable that it could be any other way.

Sad.

@3, sorry the country you love is such a shithole but guess what? It's a fucking shithole of a nation.

Soon, if you want to travel to the third world you won't have to travel far: just walk outside cause you're there babe!!

And yet more than anything.

More than taxing the 1%.

More than increasing the minimum wage.

Raising -- doubling...tripling! -- the salaries of the middle class is the only real way out of this mess.

It is the middle class who will buy the 21st century products, from AI, to E-books, to Hydrogen fuel cell cars.

It is not that college tuition is too high.
It is not that homes (in most places other than obsolete cities) are too expensive.

It is that middle class wages are too low!

The middle class is parched, dry.

It needs to be watered with money...

3) two words: social services. in the US you get little from the government and little from the private sector. Also, read @4.

@5
*yawn*
" We’re often told that to be poor in the US is much worse than being poor in the social democracies of Europe. And the bottom 10% in the US are indeed worse off than the bottom 10% in Sweden. But they’re better off than the bottom 10% in Germany or France: places where we are told that there is indeed that social democracy."
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/…

And I love America only because its culture is mine kind of and it's where I keep all my stuff. I have burned and shitted on the US flag and hate most of the slave owning asshole founding fathers. I'm the furthest thing from a patriot. Patriotism is another form of collectivism, just like racism, socialism, sexism, homophobia, and religious fundamentalism.

I'm sick of talking about religion. God is Dead Nietzsche said 100 years ago. Whether you agree or not, give the guy props for revolutionary thinking. Plus I really don't care about half or more of the U.S. population. I'm doing ok by not realizing they exist so to speak. I feel the homos pain, and other religions who aren't as highly represented. Bring down Christianity to its knees, destroy it. I still think I'll be moseying along doing my thing.

The analogy I've always used is that Republicans believe the economy is driven by profits while Democrats believe the economy is driven by wages.

They voted for this shit. Remember Bush? It bit them in the ass. Then they vote for Democrats to clean up the shit pile. They can complain, but the ignorant assholes still run congress. They are clearly continuing the damage.

It's ok to be poor and starve because the reward is only realized in heaven. If you don't believe that, then you tend to be willing to do more about improving your lot here in the real world. Religion becomes the excuse for the oppressed as well as the oppressor.

Oh @1 you silly, every good, God-fearing 'mukin will tell you that those cave paintings CAN'T be 32,000 years old! Either the scientists got their measurements completely wrong (carbon dating - how does THAT work?) or else it's just Jehovah playing a little joke on us to test our faith - or conversely Satan engaging in a scurrilous deception to test our faith.

Guys, guys! Relax, it's cool. With all these super-rich that we have in the US, the free-market trickle-down economics is going to kick in any day now.

Aaaaany day now.

And yet, despite the evidence that reducing income inequality reduces violence and crime (firearms related or not), gun-control-nuts seem to think more gun control laws, on top of them many that we already have that aren't enforced, is the answer.

@15: impressively specious reasoning.

I am all for this inequality-reduction idea you're advocating. let's try it and see if it stops crazy fucks with no records from getting ahold of firearms.

@8 you don't get invited to parties do you.

@3: You miss the point. The per capita net worth isn't all that interesting; what IS significant is the nearly 7-fold difference between mean and median net worth in the USA. This indicates a significant number of extremely high outliers, or as we know them, the super-rich.

@18
Yes, there are a few super rich in the US who have a lot of wealth. That's because the government favors policies that favor the super-rich. Nothing new. That and the fact that our education system is sinking fast because the government, on command of the elites in the military industrial complex, would rather spend tax payer money on Empire Building then on education.
But even if the super rich had all their money confiscated, that wouldn't be enough to cure the debt and make everyone else any better off.

And judging the situation by a few people on tops means nothing. If there was a town where everyone made a hundred grand a year and Bill Gates moved in, suddenly there is high income inequality despite there being no poverty. Likewise we shouldn't be overly concerned with the rich doing well as long as our lower-income citizens are taken care of and have opportunity for advancement.

200k more jobs this month. of course they're not good jobs, but every job will get a lil better as we approach and arrive at full employ, at long last. sweet world

the US is getting safer to live in and one can still borrow a lot of money and go to nursing school and make a lot of money and pay off one's student debt. the bottom fifth in income have socialized health insurance, as do the oldsters

@20 People nod and smile a lot when they talk to you don't they.

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie!

@21, as a certified "oldster" with socialized health insurance, I can tell you that it's really quite an excellent little perk. I want to take this opportunity to thank all you "youngsters" for paying for it. Of course, if you think it will still be there for you when you reach my age, you've probably done way too many drugs in your life. But hey, that isn't my problem.

@20: Except that our poorer citizens aren't doing so great, and you favor cutting the social safety net and doing away with the minimum wage. (By the way, please tell me again that the minimum wage is racist; by the same logic you use, rank insignias are racist as well.) You say one thing, and then you say something entirely different, and who knows what you actually do? I do wonder how you deal with all the cognitive dissonance surely arising from the superimposition of your varied opinions.

This is about net worth. I wonder why nobody ever talks about America's love affair with consumer debt. If we buy things before we can afford them, we really are never going to get ahead. It gets really hard with even a little credit card debt.

I don't believe those other countries have a culture of the same accumulation of stuff that they can't afford.

Oh, I see why the French rich think that we, the French middle class, are just too greedy.

You know what ? It's nice to live in a small rented house and have kids who go to school and who get to have a musical education, despite being too poor to pay income taxes. Just across the street my richer neighbours have both indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and own their much bigger house, and they have more money that I would know what to do with, and vacations I will never experience in my life ; but hey, we're still neighbours, and their kids went to the same schools my kids attend now.