Posted on 01/20/2013 9:50:34 AM PST by TaxPayer2000
The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of $240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over, Oxfam has revealed, adding that the global economic crisis is further enriching the super-rich.
“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said.
For example, the luxury goods market has seen double-digit growth every year since the crisis hit, the report stated. And while the world's 100 richest people earned $240 billion last year, people in "extreme poverty" lived on less than $1.25 a day.
Oxfam is a leading international philanthropy organization. Its new report, ‘The Cost of Inequality: How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt us All,’ argues that the extreme concentration of wealth actually hinders the world’s ability to reduce poverty.
The report was published before the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, and calls on world leaders to “end extreme wealth by 2025, and reverse the rapid increase in inequality seen in the majority of countries in the last 20 years.”
Oxfam's report argues that extreme wealth is unethical, economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive.
The problem is a global one, Oxfam said: "In the UK inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. In China the top 10 percent now take home nearly 60 percent of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which is now the most unequal country on Earth and significantly more [inequality] than at the end of apartheid."
In the US, the richest 1 percent's share of income has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20 percent, according to the report. For the top 0.01 percent, their share of national income quadrupled, reaching levels never seen before.
“We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true,” Executive Director of Oxfam International Jeremy Hobbs said.
Hobbs explained that concentration of wealth in the hands of the top few minimizes economic activity, making it harder for others to participate: “From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from a global economic system which is rigged in their favor.”
The report highlights that even politics has become controlled by the super-wealthy, which leads to policies “benefitting the richest few and not the poor majority, even in democracies.”
“It is time our leaders reformed the system so that it works in the interests of the whole of humanity rather than a global elite,” the report said.
The four-day World Economic Forum will be held in Davos starting next Wednesday. World financial leaders will gather for an annual meeting that will focus on reviving the global economy, the eurozone crisis and the conflicts in Syria and Mali.
I use the lottery all the time as an example that money does not solve poverty. In the US, poverty is a mindset not a lack of money. Your examples ring true. I have seen it with local lottery winners. Give certain people a big chunk of money and they buy stuff until they are out of money. Very few will actually take their winnings and use it to secure their future.
I think the difference does matter — there’s a big difference between having trouble making ends meet and not being able to afford luxuries because all your income is going to food, shelter and clothing (or maybe those plus a cell phone bill, a cable TV/internet bill and keeping a junk car on the road here in the U.S.) and not being able to get enough to eat on a regular basis while living in a hut made of cardboard and packing crates and wearing rags.
The point of Oxfam’s claim is that 1/4 of the aggregate income of the 100 wealthiest people on the planet would, correctly used, suffice to abolish the truly grinding poverty suffered principally in Third World countries (and replace it with more ordinary, more bearable poverty).
The operative word, here, is "earned". They went out and worked to earn that money, it wasn't a gift (which leftist money-grabbers believe should be theirs to use for buying votes and spending frivolously).
The benefits to the non-rich of the creation of wealth by the rich mainly occur under conditions of freedom and laissez faire capitalism, where beyond a certain point, excess concentration of capital is incompatible with the division of knowledge and the benefits of the division of labor.Under capitalism, the rich will realize that they will be better off owning a smaller piece of a large pie in a prosperous society, than owning a large piece of a smaller pie in a hellhole.
“Poverty” can never be ended unless you kill all the poor people. People are not poor because of lack of money. Mt 26:11a “The poor you will always have with you,” (NIV)
There are roughly 10 billion people in the world. Let's say that roughly 24% live in poverty. That's 2.4 billion people. Since his $240 billion is said to eliminate this poverty four times over, this works out to 240B divided by four equals $60 billion. Divided into 2.4 billion people works out to $25 per year per person in poverty. Does the author really believe that 25 bucks will provide food and housing for a person for a whole year? Keep in mind that the next year they will have nothing since the earners will stop working once they won't be able to retain the fruits of their labors.
“$240 billion is enough to end global poverty? LOL”
The article failed to mention that it would end poverty for one month.
Translation > the Author is a fricking hack and joke.
Very true. The point is that the liberal knee-jerk reaction of “feed the poor” has an immense emotional appeal, but in and of itself just simply doesnt work. Really, the only way of solving the problems of some of these very poorest nations is for their entire society to be systematically reorganised. And then of course, you are accused of “recolonisation”.
hmm...how are the poor doing on your graph? More pertinently how are the middle income folk?
Wow, I didn’t realize that “teaching a Man to fish” would cost so much money.
Obama's recent tax increase bill to solve the Fiscal Cliff is expected to raise an additional $62b/year from "the rich", while giving away $68b in investment crony capitalist giveaways! Obama is just a crook from Chicago with an ideology informed by his Kenyan dad.
How many are employed by these people? How many businesses are supported by these people? How many charitable groups
are supported by tese people?
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