We are almost never provided with accurate facts on where we stand economically in the world. Our politicians, to get us to vote for them, constantly tell us we’re barely getting by and that we don’t have enough. If we don’t elect them, we won’t have enough and won’t be happy. The media goes along for the ride parroting what they say.

We’re bombarded with hundreds of advertisements every week telling us that we need their products to be happy, and if we don’t buy them, we’ll be unhappy or even ostracized.

Studies have shown that after about $50,000 a year, having more money does not increase happiness. Between 0 and $50,000, happiness goes up as income goes up. After $50,000, there is no gain in happiness. One probable reason is more of our time is taken up buying things, finding a place to put them, maintaining and fixing them, going through them to get rid of the ones we rarely use, and trying to give them away or trash them. Less of our time is spent on activities that bring happiness, and our lives are cluttered.

Unless you are homeless, you are far wealthier than the average person, and you live in the richest time period in history. If you go back even 100 years, 0% of the world had a TV, 0% of the world took commercial flights, and a tiny percentage of the world had a car or a radio. Only 10% of the U.S. had a phone, and most phones only connected to a small network of phones, not the whole system.

If you go back even 25 years ago, 0% had cell phones, Internet access , blue tooth or ipods, and only 1.8% of the world had a computer. People paid $2,000 for a computer that was worse than a $50 used computer is today, and there were almost no apps. About 25% of Americans had cable TV with a maximum of 79 channels. Nobody had flat screen TVs or hi-def TVs and almost nobody had big screen TVs. People paid a few hundred dollars for a TV that you can buy used today for $30. Today, most of us have all of the above, yet have been persuaded that we still don’t have enough.

The person at the exact middle level in the world lives on $1,700 a year when adjusted for differences in costs of living, aka purchasing power parity, meaning it’s $1,700 US dollars that can buy the same amount we can with $1,700. The U.S. median is $28,567 or about 12 times more. It's actually quite a lot more because the $1,700 figure includes all consumption, while the American figure does not include things like free public schools, unreported income, and existing assets such as bank accounts, investments and real estate. People trying to live on less than $1,7000 a year typically don't have bank accounts or any assets.

So 99.9% of Americans make much more than the average person, but they don’t know it. If a person is persuaded they don’t have enough, they naturally think they don’t have enough to donate significantly. This explains why in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we only donate 2% of our total income. When a person realizes they are actually among the wealthiest in the world, they're more likely to donate more sizable sums. We hope that your use of the World Wealth Calculator will lead you to do the same.

Change always begins with awareness. We are going to share the calculator for free with all nonprofits helping the poorest half of people. Besides being able to easily place the calculator on their websites, they will receive all donations made via the calculator results pages. They can also share their calculator with their email lists and social networks so people can find out how well off they are, and be inspired to give more significantly.

If you are interested in seeing this occur, please make a donation to get it off the ground. We have 65% of the funds needed to do it, and only need $7,000 more. This is a project of The Daily Source, a 501(c)3 non-profit, so donations are tax-deductible.

To donate online by check or credit card, click here. You can also mail a check payable to The Daily Source to 3800 S Tamiami Trail, #321, Sarasota, FL 34239. To receive an email notifying you when the site goes live, click here. You can also use our contact page to sign up for our newsletter, give us feedback, or express interest in volunteering.

There are more than 40,000 nonprofits whose missions are to help the poorest half of humanity. The average size of their email lists and social networks is about 2,000 people. If 4,000 nonprofits share a calculator with their contacts, that's 8 million people. If 1% on average donate just an extra $50 a year, that's $4 million a year. It will cost us only $18,000 per year to host it. That is $220 generated for every $1 spent.

On average, $400 saves a life in poor regions. So a $1,000 donation will generate $220,000 in donations, and save roughly 550 lives. Even if it generates half that, it's still 275 lives saved for every $1,000 donated. You can't get bigger bang for the buck than that. This can do a tremendous amount of good for the world.

Please help make it a reality today.