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World’s 100 richest earned enough in 2012 to end global poverty 4 times over
RT.com ^ | 20 January, 2013, 15:46

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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 7deadlysins; envy; greed; marxism; redistribution
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To: TaxPayer2000

Fiscal cannibalism should be no more tolerable than the big iron pot variety.


21 posted on 01/20/2013 10:15:08 AM PST by headsonpikes (Mass murder and cannibalism are the twin sacraments of socialism - "Who-whom?"-Lenin)
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To: TaxPayer2000

A quick Bing search says the world GDP was about $70 trillion last year. So $240 billion is only 0.3% of the wealth created last year. Is this so outrageous?

How many times would $69.76 trillion eliminate poverty?


22 posted on 01/20/2013 10:15:23 AM PST by DManA
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To: Vanders9

Don’t forget that, even if you manage to distribute the food, you end up destroying domestic producers. No one wants to grow rice, for example, if rice can be had for “free.”


23 posted on 01/20/2013 10:16:10 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: JHL

And, by the standards Oxfam (or the World Bank) uses to define “extreme poverty”, leaving aside the mentally ill homeless who can’t or won’t take either state benefits or charity at the levels offered, there is no extreme poverty in the U.S.


24 posted on 01/20/2013 10:16:45 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: Baynative
We've spent over THREE TRILLION on poverty in America since Lyndon Johnson's great society,P>I've read it's more like 13 trillion, but who really knows.

All I know as well as you do is it DIDN'T work!

25 posted on 01/20/2013 10:16:48 AM PST by Las Vegas Ron (Medicine is the keystone in the arch of socialism)
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To: TaxPayer2000
...assuming that if you gave these people money they would spend it wisely or that they would not be right back where they are in a few days/weeks/months.

There would be a run on 40oz Malt Liquor in the US
You probably couldn't find a decent nose bone in Africa
There would be an explosion of babies in South America that would make today's poverty look like Happy Days Are Here Again....

...and in the end they would come back expecting more.

26 posted on 01/20/2013 10:17:37 AM PST by Feckless (I was trained by the US << This Tagline Censored by FR >> ain't that irOnic?)
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To: cripplecreek

240 billion (4 times over), so divide by 4...

so they are really saying that only 60 billion is needed to end global poverty. Only 25% of what they earned....


27 posted on 01/20/2013 10:18:34 AM PST by EBH ( The 2nd Amendment exists for times like this.)
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To: TaxPayer2000
Some people just want to grab a meal for the day and a shower and that is life for them. In fact, many (not sure of the percentage but I find it to be a large chunk) people are like that and they will stay poor and could care less to change. They really do not care about stuff..even free stuff.

You can't take from the savers and investors and give it to the masses..it will be gone, with the wind, in a day.

28 posted on 01/20/2013 10:19:47 AM PST by Earthdweller (Harvard won the election again...so what's the problem.......? Embrace a ruler today.)
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To: TaxPayer2000

http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/


29 posted on 01/20/2013 10:20:06 AM PST by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet - Mater tua caligas exercitus gerit ;-{)
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To: TaxPayer2000

Really twisted thinking. How much money (our tax dollars) have we spent over the years on the “War on Poverty”? Check it out. The Dems, libs, whatever, want the majoity in poverty for their votes.


30 posted on 01/20/2013 10:23:15 AM PST by winkadink (During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. George Orwell)
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To: TaxPayer2000

Who’s more to blame, the rich who earn the fiat money, the bankers who create the fiat money out of nothing, or hte politicians, who confiscate and spend more and drag us and future generations into massive debt?


31 posted on 01/20/2013 10:25:52 AM PST by Secret Agent Man (I can neither confirm or deny that; even if I could, I couldn't - it's classified.)
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To: TaxPayer2000

“Tax the rich, Feed the poor,

til there are, Rich no more”

Repeat.......ooops !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzrUqAtUcpU

The irony of this classic remains.

Shortsighted feel good polices that get votes and leave disaster in their wake.

The Gov’t is like a drug company that has a cure but no disease. The only way to use the cure is to create the disease.


32 posted on 01/20/2013 10:26:21 AM PST by Zeneta (Why are so many people searching for something that has already found us ?)
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To: cripplecreek

240 billion only covers 80 days of barry’s overspending every day of 3 billion.


33 posted on 01/20/2013 10:26:42 AM PST by Secret Agent Man (I can neither confirm or deny that; even if I could, I couldn't - it's classified.)
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To: TaxPayer2000
Oxfam's report argues that extreme wealth is unethical, economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive.

Bull crap. It's unethical to work hard for yourself and reap the rewards? It's inefficient to be productive and earn more than someone who is not productive? It's politically corrosive...perhaps, but only because politicians take the money and use it to their own benefit. Socially divisive? Really? Only if you believe that everyone should be paid the same regardless of effort. Obozo has made it divisive by saying that the rich should pay their fair share, yet fails to point out that the richest 10% foot 71% of the tax burden. Environmentally destructive? England almost denuded itself in the Middle Ages because trees were chopped down for heating. It's only because of an entrepreneurial spirit that alternative heating sources have been developed. Without the work of those "rich guys", we'd all be ice cubes by now.

Environmentally destructive? This piece of research and the paper used to write it, represents an unnecessary denuding of the nation's forest. It's pure political crap.

34 posted on 01/20/2013 10:26:51 AM PST by econjack (Some people are as dumb as soup.)
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To: adorno
They could take that $240 billion dollars away from the rich, redistribute it to the needy all over the world, and once those “needy” spend it, they’ll have to come back for another $240 billion, which won’t be there the next time.

The rich just set up businesses selling beer to the "needy" and it all comes right back. :)

35 posted on 01/20/2013 10:27:27 AM PST by Mr. Jeeves (CTRL-GALT-DELETE)
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To: TonyM

no, no....obamaphones end poverty. flat screens tell you you’ve won the lottery.


36 posted on 01/20/2013 10:27:42 AM PST by Secret Agent Man (I can neither confirm or deny that; even if I could, I couldn't - it's classified.)
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To: TaxPayer2000

Bookmark.


37 posted on 01/20/2013 10:30:07 AM PST by SoCal SoCon (Conservatism =/= Corporatism.)
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To: fhayek

When will people stop drooling over what others earn and get out and earn some for themselves. Wealth envy is a serious sickness that weakens the individual as well as the country. Envy works to the advantage of the Progressives. It creates the demon to be despised then overthrown with the result that all are miserable in their equality except the leaders, who will live in style and comfort.

ASK THE RUSSKIES HOW THEIR REVOLUTION WORKED OUT FOR 90% OF THEM! Of course 25,000,000 cannot answer, they are dead and buried.


38 posted on 01/20/2013 10:31:01 AM PST by BatGuano (You don't think I'd go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do ya?)
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To: DManA
So $240 billion is only 0.3% of the wealth created last year. Is this so outrageous?

Actually, yes. It is a grotesque underestimation, intentionally offered to make it so that more low-information voter will agree with taking more from the evil rich. Once they agree with the premise, THEN they can inform us about the "slight underestimation" and quadruple (or more) what they confiscate from those who contribute more to the economy than the government does.

39 posted on 01/20/2013 10:36:03 AM PST by Teacher317 ('Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.)
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To: TaxPayer2000

Wealth invested in the means of production is not the same thing as wealth pissed-away on bling and Air Jordans and Escalades.


40 posted on 01/20/2013 10:37:11 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (TYRANNY: When the people fear the politicians. LIBERTY: When the politicians fear the people.)
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