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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Would you rather be 95th percentile in Lesotho, or 40th percentile in America?

I think it would actually be quite competitive. 95th percentile in Lesotho would put you into literal top 100,000 people in that small nation. We are talking about a country with Gini coefficient of 0.44, being part of top elite would mean being very rich even in nominal terms - probably scion of some well connected family a respected local businessman or government official who studied in South African university (5,6% people have university degree in Lesotho) and goes there for shopping trips. Not to even talk about things like social status or what you can afford - things like your own maids and servants, housing etc.

UBS estimated that in 2022, 96.6% of Lesotho's population had a net worth of less than $10k.

https://rev01ution.red/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/global-wealth-databook-2023-ubs.pdf

In 2017, 89% of Lesotho's population lived on less than $10/day:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-living-with-less-than-10-int--per-day?tab=chart&country=LSO

Edit: Also, top n is less informative than top x%. The poorest person in Tuvalu is in the top 10,000 richest adults in the country. Top 100k in Ethiopia (pop 132 million)? Sure, probably richer than the average American. But Lesotho's economy just isn't productive enough or large enough to support 100k genuinely wealthy people.