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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat Happens When 85 People Are Worth the Same Amount as 3.5 Billion?
Easy to answer: Revolutions
What Happens When 85 People Are Worth the Same Amount as 3.5 Billion?
A new Oxfam report warns of the dangers of global inequality.
Corinne Grinapol jan 29, 2014 = February 17, 2014 edition of The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/178157/what-happens-when-85-people-are-worth-same-amount-35-billion
Here's a riddle: What do the eighty-five wealthiest people in the world have in common with the 3.5 billion poorest? Answer: the richest sliver possesses the same share of the world's wealth as its poorest half. Another startling fact? One percent of the world's families now possess 46 percent of the world's wealth. And another? Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has grown in the last three decades.
These and similar revelations are at the heart of "Working for the Few," a new report by Oxfam International about rising inequality. Released two days before this year's World Economic Forum, the global elite's annual high-altitude shmooze-fest, the report is a bracing look at the way the world's wealthiest have rigged the system, bending it into a "winner-takes-all" feedback loop to perpetuate their place at the top.
As laid out in the report, the rigging is made possible by this fantastic "ill-gotten" wealth ($110 trillion for the top 1 percent alone), which creates "political capture": the ability of elites to influence lawmakers to enact policies favorable to their interests. And that leads, in turn, to "opportunity capture," in which the best of everything, from healthcare to education, flows to the wealthy and their offspring. Then the cycle begins again.
..............
These and similar revelations are at the heart of "Working for the Few," a new report by Oxfam International about rising inequality. Released two days before this year's World Economic Forum, the global elite's annual high-altitude shmooze-fest, the report is a bracing look at the way the world's wealthiest have rigged the system, bending it into a "winner-takes-all" feedback loop to perpetuate their place at the top.
As laid out in the report, the rigging is made possible by this fantastic "ill-gotten" wealth ($110 trillion for the top 1 percent alone), which creates "political capture": the ability of elites to influence lawmakers to enact policies favorable to their interests. And that leads, in turn, to "opportunity capture," in which the best of everything, from healthcare to education, flows to the wealthy and their offspring. Then the cycle begins again.
..............
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What Happens When 85 People Are Worth the Same Amount as 3.5 Billion? (Original Post)
Coyotl
Feb 2014
OP
Rex
(65,616 posts)1. Nothing. The 85 will bloom into 100 and the other number will be at 4 billion
and we will be talking about it all over again.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)2. K&R....
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)3. And they know their wealth is ill-gotten too...
but they will never willingly give up a cent of it.
"Ill-gotten wealth => creates "political capture" => creates "opportunity capture" => create ill-gotten wealth."
That is about how it works. And what we are seeing in this country today.