Ultra Rich and the Rest of Us

A new report has been published by Oxfam, an international organization that works to eradicate the sources of poverty, showing that the richest 85 people in the world control the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 Billion people throughout the world, and the inequality is still increasing.  Titled "Working for the Few", it examines the consequences of extreme wealth inequality.

Some economic inequality is essential to drive growth and progress,

rewarding those with talent, hard earned skills, and the ambition to

innovate and take entrepreneurial risks. However, the extreme levels of

wealth concentration occurring today threaten to exclude hundreds of

millions of people from realizing the benefits of their talents and hard

work.

Extreme economic inequality is damaging and worrying for many

reasons: it is morally questionable; it can have negative impacts on

economic growth and poverty reduction; and it can multiply social

problems. It compounds other inequalities, such as those between

women and men. In many countries, extreme economic inequality is

worrying because of the pernicious impact that wealth concentrations can

have on equal political representation. When wealth captures

government policymaking, the rules bend to favor the rich, often to the

detriment of everyone else. The consequences include the erosion of

democratic governance, the pulling apart of social cohesion, and

the vanishing of equal opportunities for all.

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.