James Surowiecki's penetrating, succinct comment on living at the bottom of the economic ladder.

The always original and interesting financial columnist for the New Yorker wrote this week about the enormous opportunity that lies hidden in plain sight for anyone willing to turn her profit-seeking eye on the poor.

Surowiecki notes that buying in small amounts, which is all a poor person can do, is always more expensive than buying in bulk.

And of course, we all know that people with tons of assets get the lowest interest rates, whereas those with nothing pay exorbitantly for the privilege of borrowing.

Put $50 in a savings account at the bank, and they'll take 10% of your assets a month as a maintenance fee.

Put $50,000 into that account, and suddenly not only are there no maintenance fees, but you're getting a nice chunk of change as interest every month, along with free checking, etc.

Put $500,000 into that bank, and suddenly the bank's increased the interest rate it's paying you.

And so it goes.

Richard P. Feynman, in his legendary remark to one of his classes at Cal Tech ("There's plenty of room at the bottom") jump-started the field of nanotechnology.

Surowiecki notes that there's plenty of profit to be made at the bottom as well.

Who's gonna collect it?

Here's his column.
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PENNY-WISE

The notion that we live in a global economy is now a commonplace.

Supply chains extend halfway around the planet, and no respectable corporation would dare show its face without at least pretending to have well-defined global strategy.

The funny thing about the global economy, though, is how much of the globe has been left out of it.

Four billion people still earn less than four dollars a day, and as far as the global economy is concerned they hardly exist - except, of course as cheap labor.

After all, if you were the C.E.O. of a big company, whom would you rather have as customers: the rural poor in Uttar Pradesh or upscale suburbanites in greater Phoenix?

But perhaps it makes better sense for companies to see the poor as patrons worthy of their solicitations.

Though developing nations don't have much money on a per-capita basis, together they control enormous sums; the ten biggest developing countries have about fourteen trillion dollars in annual purchasing power.

Most corporations assume that the world's poor are so preoccupied with getting by that they're indifferent to the allure of consumer goods or new technology, but the evidence suggests that poor consumers are similar to rich ones: they like to shop.