So, shall we just arrest the richest 100 people, confiscate their wealth, and solve all the world's problems at once?
In our post-moral world, we could at least pretend that's on the table.
Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
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Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#12Dire poverty is self-inflicted. Corrupt, heavy-handed governments, pursuing illogical economic policies or deliberate starvation of opposition tribes. You could write that check tomorrow and the day after, Zimbabwe or North Korea or Somalia or even India would be the same. There are places in the world where the locals are killing people for offering the polio vaccine to children.
Further, global poverty is actually in decline around the world. http://www.economist.com/node/21548963
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#13In this article, we learn that we can transform stock price increases into food and clothes, and that there is no corruption in undeveloped countries.
Hate to be sarcastic about this topic, but that headline needs it.
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#14So, shall we just arrest the richest 100 people, confiscate their wealth, and solve all the world's problems at once?
I think he's suggesting we give it to oxfam which would at least end this guy's problems.
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#15Back of the envelope calculations, grabbing some numbers off of Wikipedia:
"In 2005, 43% of the world population (3.14 billion people) have an income of less than U.S. $2.5/day. 21.5% of the world population (1.4 billion people) have an income of less than US$1.25/day."
So the bottom 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25/day.
1/4 of the $240 billion annual income cited is $60bn a year, spread amongst 1.4 billion people yields $0.117 a day.
Assuming that the average income of that 1.4 billion is half of $1.25, that would give us an ~18% boost to income (not necessarily livelihood).
Which is a surprisingly high figure. Why the hell wouldn't they lead with that? The title is clearly a fairytale to anyone with any sense.
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#16Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#17OK, and the annual income of the rest of the world is enough to end it how many times over, exactly? I can guarantee you, more than four.
So what? The annual income of the rest of the world is distributed among 7 billion people -- not 100 people.
So even if it could "end world poverty more than four times over" the amount per person gets negligible. You cannot get much from the already poor to give it to the already poor.
A better example would be the richest 10% of adults, which accounts for 85% of the world total assets (so the other 90% has just 1/5 what they have).
The thing is, just getting 1/4 of the property of the richest 100 persons could save hundreds of millions of lives and improve billions, while it would leave those 100 perfectly fine.
The reason we don't do it is because we value private property (especially of the rich) more than millions of human lives.
(We think nothing of overtaxing or working to the bone the poor on the other hand, or stealing their natural resources and land -- as centuries of colonialism has shown).
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#18OK, and the annual income of the rest of the world is enough to end it how many times over, exactly? I can guarantee you, more than four.
if you got 100 000 cakes that you must eat them all in 1 month and i take away from you 10 cakes or even 1000 did it really matter to you? if you got 2 cakes for a month and i take away 1 does this matter?
>> "Does 1 cake really matter"?
All of these "100 richest people" probably give away more than 100x what you earn in a year already. Are you honestly going to call them selfish?
If you are, then you are saying everyone should give away as much of their "cakes" as possible. Can you afford to give away an extra "cake"? Probably. Then you are selfish too, by your own logic.
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#19Yeah, and most of these rich people are also huge philanthropists that donate massive sums to charity.
Well, only 19 people have given more than $1bn to charity http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2011/05/19/the-worlds... which leaves a lot of people not giving much away. The Russian oligarchs seem to like to spend money on football teams and mansions not alleviating poverty, while the Chinese rich do not seem to give much away either.
Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over
#20So, shall we just arrest the richest 100 people, confiscate their wealth, and solve all the world's problems at once?
Of course not; that is never the prescription. Because if you keep the institutions in place, gross inequality would simply reemerge.
Like if you toppled the kings while keeping a feudal system, or freed all the slaves while keeping slavery intact. You have to alter the system to one which doesn't doesn't have these outcomes.
Obviously, the powerful elites don't like this, as they correctly perceive this as "revolution": a fundamental change to the institutions. (An egalitarian society by definition means they won't have massively greater power than others.) So they will predictably respond with violence. (Note that the police and military effectively work for them.)