Which doesn't keep pace with world GDP. Something the article doesn't want you to know.
IE, the rich are getting poorer compared to the rate of world growth.
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’m not falling for this..... obama administration is again pitting one group against the other.
Do the math.
$240B / world population = $35.
The article describes “extreme poverty” as living on less than $1.25/day.
Another $35 per year won’t help.
Relegating that money to just 10% of the population at best raises them to about $2.25/day (or less). That still doesn’t help much: twice dang near zero is still dang near zero.
Not sure how they take that to ending global poverty 4 times over.
And I don’t see the author(s) giving up most of their income to others.
OPRAH already proved you CANNOT END POVERTY BY GIVING PEOPLE MONEY! The big Lottery winners as a rule usually prove it true, also!
I am too worried about my family sinking into poverty to be concerned about global poverty, idiots!
Better than just locking the family out and giving the bucks to the professional nonprofit oundation class ~ those people are all scum you know.
Not a terribly good argument. Luxury products, by definition, are produced in small quantities and employ comparatively few people, as opposed to products intended for mass consumption.
I understand your point, but as a percentage of the total economy of the world luxury products are a small factor.
As I expect can be quickly shown by comparing the worldwide employee count of Rolls and Lamborghini to that of Toyota and Ford.
Which doesn't keep pace with world GDP. Something the article doesn't want you to know.
IE, the rich are getting poorer compared to the rate of world growth.
Burning a Mona Lisa to keep warm is sometimes the correct answer.
When you are dead you have no business. You are dead. Time to take care of your own people even if you hated them in life. Why should they become a public charge when you have left billions behind.
Of course, you know the REAL solution that the Proggies have for the “excess poor”.
A bullet to the head and a ditch, some lime, and a bulldozer.
They could probably achieve THAT for $240 billion. . .
I wonder how many of them were liberal 1%’ers?...
Titty bars deserve to exist ~ but life is for the living ~ not the dead.
What's good for Conservatism is good for America, and the world.
If you’re experiencing it, it doesn’t matter if it’s mild or extreme poverty. But we’re nothing near the level of poverty that they suffer in 3rd world countries
The rich could do LOTS of things if they wanted. But is this THEIR problem? Are they responsible fo the bad decisions of others? Hardly.
The taxpayers of the U.S. have been bilked out of BILLIONS of dollars for the war on poverty, drugs, etc,etc,etc.
Has it helped? You be the judge.
Hey!
LBJ’s war on poverty” has spent $9 trillion and counting.
Yes, $9 trillion - those are tax dollars.
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