The 62 Richest People On Earth Now Hold As Much Wealth As The Poorest 3.5 Billion

[Eugene]

Source: Huffington Post

The 62 Richest People On Earth Now Hold As Much Wealth As The Poorest 3.5 Billion

01/17/2016 07:02 pm ET | Updated 1 hour ago

Emily Peck
Executive Business & Technology Editor, The Huffington Post

All the money in the world is growing ever more concentrated in the hands of just a few people, a report released Sunday night makes clear.

Just 62 ultra-rich individuals -- a list that is primarily made up of men and includes Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, the Koch Brothers and the Walmart heirs -- have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. Five years ago, it took 388 rich guys to achieve that status.

The wealth of the richest 62 has increased an astonishing 44 percent since 2010, to $1.76 trillion. Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half of the world dropped by 41 percent.

“This is terrible,” Gawain Kripke, Oxfam's Policy Director, told The Huffington Post. “No one credible will say this is good for the world or good for the economy.”

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Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/global-wealth-inequality_56991defe4b0ce4964242e09?utm_hp_ref=business

[Fantastic Anarchist]

1. Posted on my Facebook with my comment:

This is not moral. This is actually pretty evil and sociopathic to have such a wealth disparity. And before someone replies with non sequiturs or red herrings, I'm not saying to take all of the rich people's money. I'm simply asking for a more moral allocation and distribution of resources so that we don't have 3.5 billion people who can't eat, while we have 62 people who have ten mansions. Because if you hate "socialism," then you should hate "socialism" for the rich. This is what that is. Fucking unbelievable.

[Dretownblues]

2. +1

[LittleBlue]

3. Having enormous wealth isn't a problem

That's an indication of how rich our society makes people. Though one could argue that with effective taxation those 62 would be a little less wealthy.

The problem is that 3.5 billion people have so little wealth. Much of the world is still stuck in a nearly medieval existence. Their governments and societies are hopeless. In 2016 when 1.3 billion Chinese are experiencing an economic miracle, there is no excuse for that. A basic level of governmental competence would see these 3.5bn with much more wealth than they currently possess.

Guinea is a country with only 12m people. It sits on potentially trillions in bauxite and iron, but also other minerals that haven't even been explored. Their per capita GDP is $492 per year. Their government is paralyzed by incompetence and infighting despite residing on top of a potential ocean of money. Work is agonizingly slow. A system of bribes has brought exploration to a near halt for the better part of a decade. Somalia has potentially hundreds of billions in oil but has just emerged from a state of near anarchy. Nobody has even been able to explore it let alone extract it. The biggest economic opportunity has been ship hijacking. Remittances from immigrants that fled west represent a huge proportion of their economy.

There isn't a single thing we can do other than sit back and hope that these countries right themselves. Many of them have the potential, it's just being squandered.