As presidential and congressional campaigns heat up, we are certain to hear more about the disparity between the 99 percent and the one percent. During the Occupy Wall Street protests, we heard the constant cry: “We are the 99 percent.” We will no doubt hear about the growing wealth gap between the mass of America and the few super-rich who own more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. While that discussion and debate is worth having, it is also worth mentioning that most of us are already in the top one percent when compared to the rest of the world. If you have ever traveled outside of the United States, and especially to a Third World country, you know this. Nearly half of the world’s richest one percent live in the United States. If we are concerned about wealth inequality within our country, we should be even more concerned with the disparity of American income compared to the rest of the world. And I might add that the other half of the richest one percent come from countries like Germany, France, Italy, England, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and Brazil. By contrast the proportion of the world’s wealthiest people living in China, India, Russia, and Africa are statistically insignificant. Here is a suggestion: find out how wealthy you are compared to the rest of the world. You can go on the Global Rich List website and put in your annual income. I found that if you make just $32,000 a year, you are in the top one percent of the richest people in the world by income. Even the poor in America are rich by the world’s standards. One economist who wrote the book, The Haves and the Have-Nots calculated that the poorest five percent of Americans earn on average the same as the richest five percent of Indians. It might be worth reminding people who complain about the wealth of the one percent in America, that they most likely are in the one percent compared to the rest of the world. And it is worth reminding us as Christians, that we have been blessed with some wealth and should be good stewards of what God has placed in our hands. http://ncfr.net/ncfr.net/subdomains/commentary/Downloads/Kerby_Anderson/05-05-2015.mp3