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May the odds be ever in your favor!
Author: Scoopster
Date: 01/27/2014 14:02:33
There’s been a lot of talk about income inequality in recent months and years, and its impact on the economic health of the world. And for good reason – the revelations from Oxfam’s report are staggering.
How do just 85 people manage to consolidate wealth between them equal to the net worth of 3.5 billion people worldwide? If you let those 85 people tell you the tale, they will say their fortunes are a result of hard work throughout their lives. The reality is they (and their accountants and laywers) worked hard to inherit, tax shelter, tax dodge and change national and international laws to multiply their net worths.
They’ll also tell you that those 3.5 billion poor souls who have to survive with 2.4 billionths of their net worths are simply not working hard enough. That they can achieve the same level of material omnipotence if they simply applied themselves. Let that number sink in - 2.4 billionths. For every dollar that these 85 people have, take a penny and cut it into 24 million pieces and give 3.5 billion people a piece each to survive on. Oh wait, that math doesn't work – you’d still have 3.476 billion people who won’t get a piece. Let’s cut those pieces up even more!
Sorry, I got off on a tangent there... As I was saying, these folks, as well as many thousands of others who aren't quite as wealthy as them have the consistent attitude that their wealth is all a result of their hard work, and the lack of wealth that billions suffer is all their own fault because they’re too lazy. In fact, this attitude was reflected in the results of a recent poll conducted by Pew Research.
The reality is, as usual, far more complex. Yes, there are poor people who are perfectly content with being poor, and there are people who are lazy. However there are MANY, MANY MORE people who work hard to make their lives just a little better. People who work two or three minimum-wage jobs just so they can afford to pay their rent and maybe keep the heat on so their kids won’t freeze, never mind how they’ll afford to feed them.. People who have committed minor crimes, served their time, and have been released yet because they are ex-convicts no one will hire them. People who have disabilities, including the thousands of veterans who have come back from Iraq & Afghanistan, or who take medications that prevent them from doing certain types of labor. People who can’t afford a car, or who drive their car to a job that pays just enough to cover the cost of driving there.
And turning to government to solve these problems is a road with little solace. The laws of the world’s many national governments work for the rich, and always have. And when they don’t, the rich give a small fraction of their wealth to those in government with their hands on the levers of power to change the laws in their favor or force a stall, increasing their wealth even more and decreasing the share of wealth among the rest of the people in the world. This has gotten noticeably worse in recent years with the increased influence of ALEC on state legislatures.
This is the way it’s always worked – we know this from history. And we also know that when it the inequality gets too great, there is bloodshed – poor people fighting over those fractions of a penny, great leaders and representatives of poor people being killed when they dare to stand up and fight back with calls to action and change (we celebrated the life of one such leader last week), and eventually poor people finally being pushed over the edge who lash out at the rich who have made their lives so miserable.
You see, the battle against income inequality isn’t just about providing everyone with a reasonable quality of life - it’s also about keeping the peace. Would you prefer the Hunger Games? Or perhaps a repeat of The French Revolution! Yeah, neither did I.
Oxfam is concerned that, left unchecked, the effects are potentially immutable, and will lead to ‘opportunity capture’ – in which the lowest tax rates, the best education, and the best healthcare are claimed by the children of the rich. This creates dynamic and mutually reinforcing cycles of advantage that are transmitted across generations.
Given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend. For instance:
• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.
• The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
• The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.
• Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.
• The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.
• In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.
How do just 85 people manage to consolidate wealth between them equal to the net worth of 3.5 billion people worldwide? If you let those 85 people tell you the tale, they will say their fortunes are a result of hard work throughout their lives. The reality is they (and their accountants and laywers) worked hard to inherit, tax shelter, tax dodge and change national and international laws to multiply their net worths.
They’ll also tell you that those 3.5 billion poor souls who have to survive with 2.4 billionths of their net worths are simply not working hard enough. That they can achieve the same level of material omnipotence if they simply applied themselves. Let that number sink in - 2.4 billionths. For every dollar that these 85 people have, take a penny and cut it into 24 million pieces and give 3.5 billion people a piece each to survive on. Oh wait, that math doesn't work – you’d still have 3.476 billion people who won’t get a piece. Let’s cut those pieces up even more!
Sorry, I got off on a tangent there... As I was saying, these folks, as well as many thousands of others who aren't quite as wealthy as them have the consistent attitude that their wealth is all a result of their hard work, and the lack of wealth that billions suffer is all their own fault because they’re too lazy. In fact, this attitude was reflected in the results of a recent poll conducted by Pew Research.
The reality is, as usual, far more complex. Yes, there are poor people who are perfectly content with being poor, and there are people who are lazy. However there are MANY, MANY MORE people who work hard to make their lives just a little better. People who work two or three minimum-wage jobs just so they can afford to pay their rent and maybe keep the heat on so their kids won’t freeze, never mind how they’ll afford to feed them.. People who have committed minor crimes, served their time, and have been released yet because they are ex-convicts no one will hire them. People who have disabilities, including the thousands of veterans who have come back from Iraq & Afghanistan, or who take medications that prevent them from doing certain types of labor. People who can’t afford a car, or who drive their car to a job that pays just enough to cover the cost of driving there.
And turning to government to solve these problems is a road with little solace. The laws of the world’s many national governments work for the rich, and always have. And when they don’t, the rich give a small fraction of their wealth to those in government with their hands on the levers of power to change the laws in their favor or force a stall, increasing their wealth even more and decreasing the share of wealth among the rest of the people in the world. This has gotten noticeably worse in recent years with the increased influence of ALEC on state legislatures.
This is the way it’s always worked – we know this from history. And we also know that when it the inequality gets too great, there is bloodshed – poor people fighting over those fractions of a penny, great leaders and representatives of poor people being killed when they dare to stand up and fight back with calls to action and change (we celebrated the life of one such leader last week), and eventually poor people finally being pushed over the edge who lash out at the rich who have made their lives so miserable.
You see, the battle against income inequality isn’t just about providing everyone with a reasonable quality of life - it’s also about keeping the peace. Would you prefer the Hunger Games? Or perhaps a repeat of The French Revolution! Yeah, neither did I.
