And it also ignores the fact that a lot of really rich people are donating a lot of money to speed up this process. Could they do more? Sure. But this discussion typically assumes that rich people hoard their money in giant bins, and that is not the case.
OK, this is going to make a lot of folks posting here upset, but what the heck…
The World Bank has announced that the world extreme poverty rate (set at US $1.25/day) was halved between 1990 and 2010. The WB pegs those values at 52 percent in 1981, down to 43 percent in 1990, and further down to 21 percent in 2010. They do state that the income gap between the rich and the poor remained wide and in some cases increased during that interval.
Basically, the rich get richer, and the poor … also get richer. By not as much as the rich, perhaps, but they still get richer.
Well you’re thinking in terms of redistributing wealth and not generating wealth. What Gates does is try to fix a problem, not breed it into a bigger problem. Not to suggest his purpose is to employ people but when his foundation works on something like bringing in water to a village it’s going to be a sustaining solution and not a bunch of trucks full of water bottles.
As a good liberal I feel it is my duty as a Citizen of the World to help relieve the ultra-wealthy of their excess and to get it back into the economy. After it spent some time in my own pocket, of course. I spent eight years performing this civic duty, and look forward to doing it again. It’s the least I can do.
The problem is neither absolute poverty, nor the absolutely rich minority; it’s the relative weight given to the obscenely rich at the cost of the poor. Wealth is a proxy for influence, for the means to ‘be heard’ in this world, for the ability to move and shake. By widening the economic gap, this influence gets concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, even in nominally ‘democratic’ countries.
The problem is thus not necessarily the distribution of wealth itself, but the representation this wealth fashions for those that have it on the stage of world politics. Those that have more, have more impact, and a system that works to provide them with ever more wealth also provides them with more impact; they thus get represented, while the voice of those at the bottom remains unheard. So while we nominally pride ourselves in providing ‘equal representation’ for all citizens, in reality, we work towards skewing this representation more and more in favour to a select elite.
Plus, there’s the economic dangers of such a disparity. Just take a look at the nifty graph showing the top 1%'s share of the annual US income. The last time we had such a huge gap, what followed was the Great Depression; and already, it’s clear to see that the current economic downswing began in 2007 when the numbers had almost reached the same level again. (Also, take a look at the graph further down showing the link between productivity and median income as regards the issue of a ‘fair’ distribution of wealth. Clearly, the compensation the average household receives for their contribution to society is no longer tied to the latter; it seems hard for me to argue that a link between the two wouldn’t be more fair.)
Thank you for your intelligent post.
Many, on either side of the “debate,” like to make the question a matter of morality. “If you’re enjoying caviar and champagne with starlets, I should too!” Or “Fuck off, what’s mine is mine. Go rob your own bank!”
But the fact is that excessive inequality degrades social and economic structure. And it is a red herring to compare today’s poverty with ancient poverty; the inequality itself degrades, even more than “absolute poverty” does.
Only the willfully ignorant would deny that the super-rich have huge political power. Unfortunately, I’m afraid many right-wingers will view that as a “good” thing.
Thanks for all the replies and thank you Marley for fixing my error.
You’ve given me lots to think about.
What counts as social wealth? How is it to be distributed?
Rich people and poor people have three things in common … food, water and air.
Food goes in one end and out the other … air gets renewed with every breath and water is necessary for your daily hygiene and to lubricate your membranes.
all that leaves is quality and quantity …
The rich have a saying among themselves, “you have to give some back”
The rich pay taxes because they have to … the rich give because they care.
If you don’t care you won’t stay rich for very long … you reap what you sow 
Is the problem the 85 rich people or the 3.5 billion poor people? If the problem if the poor people, the answer is globalization. Look at China, in living memory they had 20 million people starve to death and are now one of the largest economies on the planet. The way they did it was to legalize free enterprise, encourage foreign direct investment, and become friendly to business. Since they started this we have seen the largest reduction if global povery in history. More countries need to follow China’s lead and unleash their economies. Charity is great to alleviate the worst types of suffering but only capitalism can end poverty.
If the probem is the rich people then that is a solution in search of a problem. The solution is to take their money and give it to people who know better how to spend it. The idea that the rich have or could hijcack the political process is a myth designed to make people feel better about their envy. The tax rates on the rich are much higher than for other members of society, and the benefits they receive from the government are not greater than anyone else. Individual rich people such as Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton have way too much influence but the most part it is not due to their being rich but their political abilities.
Just out of curiosity, have you taken accounting? If it was mandatory you’d have several generations of people loudly complaining that they had to take a stupid accounting course to learn things they’ve never used. I happen to be a businessman and I often find my knowledge of cost accounting useful to my professional work. The basics of double entry accounting though? Never. And especially never in my personal life.
A class it personal finance might be useful, on the other hand. The problem is that by the time anyone has any money they’re too old for compulsory education.
It should be noted that much of what is considered wealth is actually credit.
What alchemy inspires you to believe this nonsense?
They get what they ‘deserve’.
Deserve means that they did something to ‘deserve’(get it?) it.
What cites do you have that the top 85 are stealing? How do you define ‘stealing’-as working to get something?
Just because you want something, or have plans for money that others earn (or deserve???) doesn’t mean that those who do not do your bidding are thieves, or that those for whom you have sympathies ‘deserve’ anything.
Wrong, those at the bottom will spend what they have, and they will be in the same boat again. A sunken boat. The poor, interestingly, are the parasites. They do not produce, they only suck up the money that producers make, and call it ‘welfare’ or ‘food stamps’, or the like. (This is not a slam at those who need assistance, it is only to line up reality with the definition of ‘parasite’. Grab a dictionary, please.)
“Might well increase the amount of available jobs”? Don’t make me laugh. If Bill Gates croaks, there will be 50 billion dollars worth of jobs opening up tomorrow? Yeah, I’d hold my breath.
“Cartoonish”? Sure. The problem is that American politics is a cartoon.
The problem with that now-famous quip by “Mittens” Romney about Papa John Schnattner’s mansion is of course that it’s economically and physically impossible for “everybody to live like this” and the concept is ludicrous. What Mittens and his friends invariably mean is “I and my friends should live like this” (and, indeed, he was actually saying this to a select crowd of such, not to the general public). The extremist capitalist ideology – in a nutshell – currently advocated by Republicans like Romney.
If there is a kernel of truth in either of those statements, it’s in the second one, in which the anecdote is supposed to set up this belief as sounding jealous and vindictive, but which actually reflects the fact that in the real world, a system that allows the unchecked accumulation of obscene wealth is also a system that is bound to be rife with economic injustices along with a disproportionate concentration of political and social power. This was very eloquently stated by HMHW in the post below that bears repeating:
What makes you equate rich with producer? The producers work for the rich, who make profits off of them; the rich don’t produce anything. And what makes you assume that most of those 3.5 billion poor people are on welfare?
And you ignored my basic point that in a consumer driven economy, consumption creates jobs. A guy sitting on a huge sum of money does not.
It depends on where his money went.
Producerism is an ugly and pernicious thing.
The poor of planet Earth, on average, spend far, far more time working than the very richest of planet Earth. And most of that work benefits the very richest in some way.
You seem to be confusing “poor” with “unemployed and receiving assistance”. Do you really think 3.5 billion people on earth are unemployed and receiving assistance? The vast majority of those 3.5 billion people work, and they work very, very hard.
That study is a joke. Their conclusions are tentative and preliminary; their measurements are far from perfect. Their “affluent” household, the one which supposedly runs things, is one which makes $146,000 annually.