Could you spend $53 million a day, every day, for a year? How many yachts would you buy?
OK, another question: what do the
richest 85 people on earth have in common with the 3.6 billion poorest people
on earth?
Easy. Each group has total wealth
of about $1.65 trillion. That’s 1,650,000,000,000 dollars.
Yup, Oxfam reports that this
“global elite” group—the 85 richest human beings—controls as much wealth as the
poorest half of humanity. Each of those poor folks—men, women and children—has an average of $458 in total wealth.
That’s roughly the value of a cow in Africa.
Each of the richest 85 folks on the
planet has roughly $19 billion, in the bank, under the mattress, wherever you
keep that kind of stash.
See, my point is, that’s too much
money. If the richest 85 wanted to spend all their money, every one of them would
have to shell out more than $53 million a day, every day, for a whole year.
If they did that, the world would
be better off: they would create more investment, more commerce, more “multiplier effect,” more
jobs, more prosperity, a rising standard of living for hundreds of millions of people, maybe a lot more.
But the richest 85 aren’t doing
that. They already have too much money, and they’re working on getting more
wealth. And they’re succeeding. You know it’s true.
In his latest NYTimes.com column, Paul Krugman talked about the myth of “the undeserving poor” and the
counterpart myth of “the deserving rich” in America. Basically, he confirms
that inequality of wages and wealth is worsening in the United States. He pointed
to “the simple fact —
American capitalism as currently constituted is undermining the foundations of
middle-class society.”
Increasingly, Krugman noted, the
richest of the rich aren’t following the rosy storyline of the well-educated, well-connected,
well-married and well-employed white collar folks who are claiming the American
dream.
Mainly, the “lucky few” are “executives of some kind, especially,
although not only, in finance.”
You know them, many of these folks are the ones who dumped the U.S. economy
into the toilet about five years ago….
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| $25,000-a-night, the Bridge Suite, Atlantis resort, Bahamas |
They have too much money, they want
more, and the grotesque imbalance of wealth is harming our economy and our society.
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