Thursday, December 07, 2006

Vital statistics

Did you know that ....

The richest 2% of people in the world ...

own more than 50% of the wealth.



The poorest 50% of people ...

own 1% of the wealth.


Think about it ...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

moby has got an interesting take on this, basically that there is no correlation between happiness and wealth

it's easy for him to say because he is a very successful musician and we know that means he doesn't ever have to worry about the rent or the electricity bill or whether he can afford food for his family

wealthy people are either lucky or have grabbed more than their share of the planet's resources, this means that there's less for everyone else

but individuals don't have much choice either way, you just do what you feel you have to do

I don't know if there's anything anyone can do about it in the long term - I suppose we can all try though

Unknown said...

Lived on beans - had money - lived on beans again!
Money doesn't make you happy. The only thing money does is to get you through each month without worry, and everyone is entitled to that.

Marie said...

Money doesn't solve all your problems but it helps solve some.

Anonymous said...

Terrible, isn't it?

I wrote something about this for a client recently and apparently, here in the UK, 1% own 23% of the wealth while the poorest 50% own 7%. Not as bad as the global figures but for a country that's supposed to be rich it's bloody dreadful! What's more, the rich have become considerably richer and the poor 50% have lost 3% of the wealth during Tony Blair's time as PM.

As Minx and Marie have said, money only solves a few problems and those problems are the ones that everybody should be entitled to live without the worry of.

It amazes me that this can still go on. Why do people accept low paid jobs working for filthy rich employers? If they just got together and said NO, something would have to change. The rich simply couldn't be rich if the poor weren't willing to let them gather that kind of money.

I could go on about this for a very long time but I'll stop there.

God how I hate the capitalist system!

Debi said...

Good points.

My thought is that when we're talking about the world's poorest, we're not talking about being short of money and struggling to pay bills etc.

We're talking about not having food, clothes or shelter; children dying as a result of a lack of clean water; deaths from easily curable diseases; desperation leading to people SELLING their own children in order to save the rest of the family ...

Confucious Trevaskis said...

Not much I can add to that Debi, except - mad world.........

Confucious Trevaskis said...

Actually, that's not quite true, I could go on for ages about capitilism inspiring greed and selfishness, the death of socialism etc.........
Makes you wonder what's going on when you hear that Tony Blair wants to spend billions on renewing Trident.....according to a radio program I heard the other day, it would cost each tax payer in the UK £850.
If this is really a democracy, let's have a vote on it - because I can think of a lot better causes to give the money to....and none of them include nuclear weapons! ( Or weapons of mass destruction, as they are called when other people have them!)

Anonymous said...

Only humans would be vain enough to think we live outside the laws of nature. And law number one of nature? Survival of the fittest. Harsh, I agree, but that's life. And, having a family connection myself, with the former Soviet Union, I will argue anyone down who believes that socialism or communism or marxism were ever a solution or noble wish.

Debi said...

Ah Lehane - such a shame you can't make the event on Sat. We could talk about this for hours ...

For now all I'll say is that the former Soviet Union was certainly not socialist or communist in the true meaning, but state capitalist ...

As for humans living outside the laws of nature - aren't we supposed to behave better than the law of the jungle would dictate?

Taken to its obvious conclusion, the theory otherwise leads to allowing anyone 'unfit' (non-Aryan?) to survive if they can ... or suffer and die ...