Globalrichlist.com

I've had this website sitting in a window here on my computer most of the day, pondering what sort of commentary that it is upon the way people live their lives. The link to it said 'prepare to feel guilty.' Once you arrive, it asks you to enter your salary and then it shows your position in the world on a slider and tells you:

You are in the top 0.911% richest people in the world.

There are 5,945,324,435 people poorer than you.
How do you feel about that? A bit richer we hope. Please consider donating just a small amount to help some of the poorest people in the world. Many of their lives could be improved dramatically or even saved if you donate just one hour's salary (approx $33.33).

How do you feel about that?

Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression here. I'm not against charity. In fact, last year I gave more money to charity than 5,139,611,901 people earned. But I felt pretty good about being in the top 0.911% of worldwide earners. I would've felt even better if I could've gotten into the top 0.839%. And I couldn't help thinking that even though I probably could greatly improve the lives of some of those 5,139,611,901 people with one hour's salary, I know it would be nothing compared to how much those 5,139,611,901 people could improve my life if they would each donate one hour's salary to me. Or even one minute's salary.

Also on the site are some rotating factlets of truthiness. My favorite is 'Three decades ago, the people in well-to-do countries were 30 times better off than those in countries where the poorest 20 percent of the world's people live. By 1998, this gap had widened to 82 times.' People tend to look at the gap between the rich and the poor as a bad thing, and in many cases it is. But if you're using the poorest countries as a baseline, I don't think it's a bad thing. If your lowest common denominator is 'shitty,' I think it's a great thing that the well-to-do countries are 82 times better than 'shitty.' If they remained only 30 times better after 22 years, people would rightly question the future of our civilization.

I'm the 54,316,565 richest person on earth! Go away, you're not getting any.