Takin' Care Of Viz-Ness

Your one-stop shop for data visualizations that explain complicated and cool stuff in digestible ways.

even-steven

If All The World's Money Was Divided Equally, Here's How Much You'd Get

The world holds around $123 trillion in cash, and is home to more than eight billion people.

6 days ago · 23.9k reads ·

As of 2024, the global M2 supply — all the money people have easily accessible, like cash, savings and money market funds — stands at roughly $123 trillion. If that sum was split equally between the world's eight billion people, how much would everyone get?

The short answer is: not a lot. According to Visual Capitalist, who analyzed CEIC and UN population data, dividing $123 trillion between all of the world's human beings only leaves each person with $15,108. This relatively low sum highlights just how unequally money is distributed across the globe.

To illustrate how far $15,000 can go, Visual Capitalist listed some of the things you can buy for that amount, including a used car, around four months of rent in NYC or two years' worth of groceries.

Click image to enlarge

Via Visual Capitalist.

Comments

Dick Justice 1 day ago

I would love for all the money to be distributed equally among the world. I think after a decade, 80-90% of the money would be redistributed to reflect the world of today.
Daniel T 4 days ago

Except you're not going to give the cash to under-18s, meaning everyone's share is more like $22,400.

If you divided ALL assets, each adult would get about $166,400.
1. Christian Breau 2 days ago
  
  $56k each, not $166k, from what I was able to gather. Curious how you got your number?
Just Some Guy 5 days ago

Hey, it's you again.

It's painfully obvious you've done exactly zero research into how bad wealth disparity has gotten, pretty much everywhere, but particularly in the country you yourself live in. I'll give you a hint, it's become unsustainable.

Maybe you should go do your homework before leaving comments that highlight how uninformed you are.

Or, better yet, maybe you should take your own advice and go live off-the-grid so you don't have internet access to leave dumb comments like you keep leaving.
Kraeg Minett 5 days ago

You are yet another apologist who believes that the exceptionally wealthys only motivation is money which is false. If wealth were the driving force why wouldn't they all give up and become unproductive once they hit $20M-ish, enough to keep them comfortable for the remainder of their lives?

The exceptionally wealthy are so simply because they are driven in a way that the vast vast majority of humans are not. Because of this they become exceptionally wealthy and NOT the pursuit of wealth itself. That's merely a byproduct.

But no... you go ahead and keep making excuses for billionaires still existing, and abject poverty being necessary to ensure that they do.
1. Barbara Bowen 3 days ago
  
  Money = Resources, Control of Resources = Power. For the exceptionally wealthy, what drives them is a desire for power. Money at that level is just tokens to keep to keep track of who controls the most. Becoming rich isn't about how hard you work, it's about getting control of resources and one thing that most people don't realize is that, if you're an employee rather than an employer, you're a resource.
2. spaz 4 days ago
  
  I agree with your take on it. It's always been exceptional people that push the boundary of expansion, growth, technological improvement, and market evolution.
  
  Many people are short sided. If everyone was exactly the same we'd still be hunter/gatherers accomplishing nothing except feeding the tribe for the next season. Life is complicated and some people have the vision and the drive to build things, invent things, and expand human civilization. But it's always a person at home complaining about the people that do things while sitting at their keyboard doing nothing but demanding everything. Funny dichotomy if you ask me. I've worked my ass off to get 1 AS, 2 Bachelors, and 2 Masters degrees. I've worked my way to to over a million in net worth through determination and commitment. I still don't come close to these rich people and that's fine because I still earned what I have. My parents were broke drug dealers/ users and I still ended up successful. In a nation like the US where we have opportunities like this there's no excuse not to seize the day and make your mark.
  
  A select few are far better than me and most, but hating and complaining gets us individually no where
  1. Lynne S. 4 days ago
    
    First off, it’s ’short-sighted,’ not ‘short-sided.’ But much more importantly, there are multiple ways to be exceptional, and only some of them involve making money. Some people have a drive to make things, including money, but others have a passion to bring communities together, or to find a cure for a disease, or to bring up their children to be kind, compassionate people, but none of those is typically associated with making millions. For whatever it’s worth, I also have two bachelor’s and two master’s, but the things I’m interested and have worked so hard in all my life aren’t in fields that make a lot of money. Does that make me inherently less valuable than you as a person? Or does the good that I’ve done in the world help raise my value in your eyes?
    
    Sociologically speaking too, the rich/elites have always served an important purpose, which is to be called upon in times of emergency or war. They either supplied money or manpower to help the whole society weather the storm. That is, until now, when the elites have grown so powerful that they are becoming disconnected from society in dangerous ways, such that even in times of emergency they don’t see themselves as having any obligations at all to the society they’ve made their riches on. To me, that’s not whining about being poor, that’s raising the alarm about something that is shifting in dangerous ways that society may not be able to foresee or handle, even if the rich can hide themselves away in a protective bubble.
Jared Steffen 5 days ago

Further evidence that we could solve world hunger if we wanted to
P.Grajek 5 days ago

Yes, but that's only physical cash. Valuation of assets would be a much better way to go about that. And it is MUCH higher per person.
Jay Amari 5 days ago

Sobering study.