rich and poor

With 2008 as a natural baseline, there is no doubt that the financial crisis hit households hard. Real wages or incomes – after adjusting for whatever inflation rate you choose – are significantly lower today. To give a sense of the scale of the drop in real pay, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, published on Wednesday, shows median full-time gross weekly earnings down 8.8 per cent between 2008 and 2014 after adjusting for consumer price inflation. Overall real median pay fell 1.6 per cent in the year to April.

The biggest squeeze occurred in 2011, when households were hit by large rises in food and energy prices. The fall in real wages for those aged 18 to 25 has been so extreme, they are now back to levels last seen in 1988. If you are young it's going to get worse. Then worse. Then worse. And finally worse.

But for the super-rich it is good news and the figures are always too mindboggling to comprehend.

The global population of ultra high net worth (UHNW) individuals who hold more than $30 million in assets is 211,275. According to the study the average ultra-high net worth individual spends $1.1 million on luxury goods and services every year

Simon Smiles, chief investment officer at UBS Wealth Management, warned of the risks the wealthy few face. "This report finds that UHNW individuals hold nearly 25 percent -- an extremely high proportion – of their net worth in cash,"

It is predicted that the global UHNW population will reach 250,000 individuals in the next five years with combined wealth surpassing $40 trillion. To put that in context, the gross domestic production of the whole U.S. in 2013 was $16.8 trillion.

  Europe’s ultra-high net worth population rose to a record 61,820 individuals during 2014, representing an increase of 3,755 people on last year’s level. The combined net worth of those people — defined as having at least $30 million in net assets — rose to $8.355 trillion, 8.9% up on last year. Germany continued to head up the European league table, as home to 19,095 ultra-rich, followed by the U.K. with 11,510 and Switzerland with 6,635.

In fact, Switzerland’s super rich now account for 0.08% of the country’s total population. That’s 30 times more than the proportion for the rest of the world, where the super-rich account for just 0.003% of total population.