Statistics_Data_Facts

This week we take a look at social class self identification in the United States.  In the US, the majority of people self-identify as middle class, regardless of how much money they actually make. This is likely due to the fact that, in general, people tend to compare themselves to those around them rather than to the country as a whole. So, even if someone is making a lot of money, if most of the people around them are also making a lot of money, they're likely to still consider themselves middle class. There are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, people who are very wealthy are often more likely to identify as upper class, and people who are very poor are often more likely to identify as lower class. But, by and large, most people in America self-identify as middle class. There are a number of reasons why this might be the case. First of all, the middle class is often seen as the ideal in America. It's the class that is most associated with the American Dream, and s...

This week we take a look at income distribution trends in the United States. Before we start, we should make clear what an income percentile is: Percentiles divide the data into 100 equal groups.   So for example if we say that a person is on the 75th income percentile (75th%), what it means is that if we gather 100 people from the general population inside a room, 75 of those will have a lower income than that person, while the other 25 of them will have a greater income.  There has been much talk lately about income inequality and the top 1% but just how far has the working class been left behind by the current economic status quo? According to  research from RAND.org, if workers below the top 10% of the income distribution, had grown at the same rate as the overall economy since 1975, they would have collectively earned $2.5 trillion more in 2018, 67% higher than their actual 2018 earnings. The income of wo...

Last year we looked at the five largest companies in 2010 vs 2020 . It was already clear by then, that the largest companies had reached a market capitalisation so high,  that it dwarfed the same graph from 10 years ago. This year the trend continues with the same companies that last year led the path, having nearly doubled their worth.    In 2011 Apple dethroned Exxon Mobil for the first time.  Fast forward to 2021, and Apple has kept the lead. Its market capitalisation has increased fivefold and is now worth over 2.3 trillion dollars. Just for comparison, the top 5 largest companies in 2011 had a combined market cap of just over $1.6 trillion adjusted for inflation, or $700 billion less from what Apple has today. In total, 4 out of the 5 top companies in 2021, have a larger market cap than the sum of the top 5 in 2011.  The sum market cap of the top 5 largest companies in 2021 is $8.8 trillion, 5.2 times the sum from just 10 years ago. The gap keeps widening. ...

For the past year, the stock and crypto markets have been nothing short of a spectacle. Even though the whole world is going through a one-in-a-lifetime crisis, the prices of certain stocks and cryptos have skyrocketed. Where should you have invested $100 a year ago? The winner, and with a vast disparity is non-other than the humble DOGE coin. A coin that started out as a joke has seen its value increase by 207-times in the span of a year.  Gamestop is trailing far behind in the second place, but it should be noted that GME shares were hovering at over $300 apiece at some point compared to the measly $140 a share is valued right now. What do you think? When will the bubble burst, if ever? 

Back in May 2010, the first commercial bitcoin transaction took place. Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John's pizzas in exchange for 10,000 bitcoin. Nine months after that monumental purchase, bitcoin would reach parity with the dollar, and just shy of eleven years later, on ₿itcoin's all-time high, these two pizzas would be worth an impressive 614.5 million dollars.  Bitcoin, especially at the start, was received with a lot of skepticism by the general public due to its notoriety. In a paper  published in 2016, researchers identified that in early 2013, gambling and black markets together accounted for 51% of all transactional inflows on the Bitcoin blockchain. By November 2013, after the nefarious Silk Road was raided by the FBI, all this activity suddenly dropped. By then, bitcoin commerce that was driven by "sin" enterprises comprised just 3% or less of total transactions.   As FinTech lawyer Marco Santori put it best:   [...] bitcoin was a cu...

Two years ago we looked at the five largest companies in 2008 vs 2018. In 2008 Exxon Mobil was again first, while in 2018 Microsoft was leading the pack with a market capitalization about two times the market cap of Exxon Mobil 10 years earlier.  Fast forward to 2020, and Apple is #1 with an impressive market cap of over 1.5trillion dollars. For comparison sake, the top 5 largest companies in 2010 had a combined market cap of just over 1.4trillion dollars or $163 billion less than only Apple has today. The sum market cap of the top 5 largest companies in 2020 is 4.3 times the sum from just 10 years ago. In contrast, the sum market cap of the top 5 largest companies in 2018, was 2.3 times the sum of those in 2008.  Many have speculated that we are in a stock market bubble, especially considering the huge impact of COVID-...

The values go beyond -100%, as the spending on those sectors hasn't only dropped, but the companies are also issuing refunds to their customers.  

Jeff Bezos net worth This week we take a look at Jeff Bezo's Net Worth.  Sources:  Jeff Bezos Net Worth is $145.4B according to Forbes Queen Elizabeth's Net Worth is $530,000,000 according to Business Insider .  Every app on the App Store is about $1,720,000 according to this graphic from Statista . Every game on Steam is $248,000, excluding DLCs. To get to that number I multiplied the total number of games on Steam, with the average price of every game on the platform. To find the average I consulted SteamDB. I located the 5 users with the most games on their library and divided their number of games with the value of their library. Then I used the mean of those 5, which is $8.29 per game.  The cost to purchase a Tesla Model S, a Model 3 a Model X and Model Y on max specs is $348,980 according to Tesla.com on 5/10/2020. Adele's Net Worth is 190,000,000 according to Celebritynetworth.com The Nobel Prize cash prize for 2020 is $935,366 according to NobelPrize.org . On...

Richest people in the world Here's a graph I also made back in September on the same topic. Back then Amancio Ortega was #5 and Mark Zuckerberg #6.