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.
Mr. Teacher Man,
I don’t.......understand
all your ways and my future,
Wasted away, the words you say
this dream I got runs much deeper.
Stand aside, your precious pride,
your dead men don’t speak any.........longer.
You don’t care
‘bout what is fair,
You got no business telling me.
I see love...I see... What is right,
You turn your cheek from the needy.
What’s so wrong...
Get what you can...
Why not get it cheaper.
/s
The Dark Ages in Northern Europe were quite a cherry picking opportunity eh!
Fortunes diluted by too many heirs are largely squandered in a generation or two. If that weren’t the case, I’d likely have been born into wealth myself. I was not, but do have a few ancestors who were wealthy in the extreme by the standards of their day. All I got was a certain grudging acceptance into certain social settings as genteel po’ lol.
Primogeniture laws were unfair but often kept inherited wealth intact. If an estate falls below a certain level of critical mass, it’s much more easily lost entirely due to poor decisions, war or other conditions beyond ones control.
That’s the fallacy of their thinking; it wouldn’t “end” poverty. If all wealth were gven equally to every person on the planet it would not be equal for long. It would be far worse because the wealth producing people would disappear if everything was going to be confiscated all the time.
That way you keep whatever advantage keeping it in the family gives, plus you keep the money out of the hands of the government AND the far leftwing extremist foundation management class.
Expanding inheritance to the 500 closest blood relatives should take care of a number of social problems right off the bat.
BTW, I'd still be very wealthy if I had my share of FifthThird Bank ~ it's an immense fortune and a relatively small number of heirs.
Then there's the Hughes Tool Foundation.
Jus' gimme' my stuff ~ take it away from the leftists.
So let’s see if I understand this correctly.
$240 Billion can wipe out global proverty four times over.
So when Pelosi, PigNose Waxman, and Zer0 spend four times as much on stimulous, that should wipe out global poverty sixteen times over!
Yet the wasted almost $900 billion stimulous didn’t do diddly-squat for nobody, nowhere, nohow, noway!
I call this bull-sh!t!
Exactly what I posted earlier, and has been played to deaf ears for well over 40 years.
“Tax the rich, Feed the poor,
til there are, Rich no more”
Repeat.......ooops !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzrUqAtUcpU
How ‘bout the Anderson family reunion ??
To hell with the poor, everyone make it on their own or quit taking up space on this planet.
Yes, I have known people that make the same $ as I or even more, but they go blow it and get into debt, are always overdrawn, etc. Then when they see me purchase or do something that costs $ they give me a dirty look and want to know how I can do that. I just tell them I save and live under my means and it usually pisses them off. I won’t lend them $ either if they ask.
The battle lines are drawn among those that have and those that don’t.
It starts with money, but that’s not the point.
It’s the winner, the one that tries,
The one that sees through all the lies.
He is the man, that needs to be restrained,
Clever and cunning, has no place,
After all, it’s the democracy of Race.
You don’t end poverty by distributing capital, it happens through wealth creation.
Giving a million bucks to a poor farmer in Ethiopia means nothing in the long run because private ownership of land is illegal there—meaning they can’t even advance to an industrial stage. Handouts to peasants in Peru means nothing in the long run if it takes five years and a hundred government-mandated steps to open a business there. Good look having a hiring expansion under those conditions.
We suffer from an unequal distribution of capitalism, not capital.
You don’t end poverty by distributing capital, it happens through wealth creation.
Giving a million bucks to a poor farmer in Ethiopia means nothing in the long run because private ownership of land is illegal there—meaning they can’t even advance to an industrial stage. Handouts to peasants in Peru means nothing in the long run if it takes five years and a hundred government-mandated steps to open a business there. Good look having a hiring expansion under those conditions.
We suffer from an unequal distribution of capitalism, not capital.
Not many folks do math apparently.
However many people (3 billion, 2 billion 1 billion?) are in ‘poverty’, divided by that 240 billion wouldn’t lift anyone out of poverty.
Before you get too excited by this ridiculous claim: “enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over”, please consider that the population control crowd would never let the rich feed the poor.
It’s the same reason they won’t let the 3rd world develop meaning sources of electricity, or teach them effective farming techniques.
“They” are afraid this self sufficiency will lead to higher population growth, and competition for the valuable resources in those areas.
Ask the bleeding hearts for a few details and you’ll find they rather prescribe crippling Depo-Provera, anal sex, and abortion than allow them to thrive.
These eugenicists are truly the scourge they charge “the rich” with being.
Well said.
How can you control, much less, make money from folks if you give them the means.
Evil ?
Self interest ?
The path to the betterment on mankind is a huge leap of faith. Faith in the inherent nature of man.
It is this leap and their inability to trust man, but seem perfectly willing to trust Gov’t, to do the right thing.
I suspect that they don’t trust their fellow man, because they don’t trust themselves, as their childish and selfishness have been empowered.
..........The battle lines are drawn among those that have and those that don’t.......
If only it were that simple. The battle is between the dark forces of totalitarianism and those it wishes to subjugate............
I agree, however you should not take my post out of context.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY !!!
While it starts with money.
It is ALL about the diffusion of ability.
Putting people on an equal playing ground by undermining the achievers while rewarding the underachievers.
The goal of “democracy” is to MAKE everybody equal.
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