WS MoreOrLess: Global Wealth
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What is the episode's opening summary and why is More or Less focusing on wealth and board games?
This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. We're the programme which is to numeracy what the coffee bean is to cafe culture, and I'm Tim Harford. In today's programme, which are the world's best and worst board games? But first... The More or Less inbox has been pinging away about Oxfam's claim that soon the richest 1% of the world's population will own more than everyone else put together. The interesting thing about this debate is that all claims of the form, the richest X percent of the planet own more than the poorest Y percent, seem to have blurred into one. They all sound the same as they whiz by on the airwaves or social media. They're believed by the same people and they're disbelieved by the same people.
But they're not the same, of course. Some of them are misleading, some of them are utterly wrong, and some of them are... Well, I wouldn't say right, because the statistics on these questions are very hard to get and very hard to compare. But I would say defensible. And this latest statistic that the richest 1% will soon collectively own as much as everyone else falls into the defensible bracket. But we wanted to turn to a slightly different question. Who's in this mysterious 1%? The people who collectively own almost half the assets on the planet. There are 2.9 million of them in the UK alone. That's according to Credit Suisse, which is, after all, the original source of the research that has fuelled Oxfam's headline-grabbing claims.
The UK's 2.9 million is almost twice as many as in China, which has 1.6 million. It's more than in Germany, which has 2.6 million, and fewer than in France, which has 3.5 million. As a rough rule of thumb, any medium-sized rich country has at least a million people in the 1%. The USA has 18 million. And there are 47 million 1%ers across the world – 1% of the world's adult population, naturally enough. To get into the top 1%, you need $800,000. Now, which are the world's best board games?
Mm, do great, because it's a freaking nice game. My favourite game is Mice and Mystics because it has lots of different versions that you can play. You can make boards that will work. So you can play with them, and it's a cooperative game. King of Tokyo! Because I am not merciful, and so I can deal lots of damage and kill all the other monsters. And you get to say, Do you concede Tokyo?
In case you were wondering, Cube Quest is a flicking dice game.
What is the debate around Oxfam's claim that the richest 1% will soon own as much as everyone else?
Now, these are good choices in my view, but we didn't want to take my children's word for it. Despite my efforts as a board game geek, they've only sampled a fraction of the games that are in existence. Oliver Rader, a senior writer for the numbers website FiveThirtyEight, has done a statistical analysis to find out the very best and the very worst games known to humanity. I must say, things aren't looking good for Snakes and Ladders. I invited Oliver into the BBC's New York studio and challenged him from London to a game of Snakes and Ladders. A gentleman player, I let him roll first.
All right, here we go. I've gotten a seven.
OK. Let me have a roll. I've got a four. Ah, a ladder.
That's the luck of it. I don't know if this surprises you, but Snakes and Ladders is actually one of the worst board games ever made. That's what I've found. What about something like Monopoly? Is that a good game? Monopoly is actually a bête noire of board gamers. It's the game they love to hate.
Why would a great board game fan sneer at Monopoly, then? What's wrong with it?
Well, Monopoly has a few characteristics that any board game designer worth his salt tries really, really hard to avoid. One is Monopoly often has a runaway winner, but the game takes another four hours. Another thing about Monopoly is players can be eliminated, so you can go bankrupt. In sort of good games, it's good to keep players sort of engaged for the whole game.
I should ask you to roll again and remind you I'm on 14, you're on 7.
All right, here we go.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the episode's opening summary and why is More or Less focusing on wealth and board games?
0:00–3:18
2
What is the debate around Oxfam's claim that the richest 1% will soon own as much as everyone else?
3:18–6:28
3
How many people are in the global top 1% and what wealth threshold defines them?
6:28–9:33