Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Could One Hundred People Save The World?

AllTheCashThatFits
OnTheHeadOfAPinVille


Well.

When it comes to ending extreme poverty the world over Oxfam thinks they could:

...An explosion in extreme wealth and income is exacerbating inequality and hindering the world’s ability to tackle poverty, Oxfam warned today in a briefing published ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.

The $240 billion net income in 2012 of the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to make extreme poverty history four times over, according Oxfam’s report ‘The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all.’... 




Now.

Here's the (real?) thing...

I reckon that the top 100 would never give up all their annual income.

Or even half of it.

But, somehow, I think that they probably wouldn't even notice if 1/8 of it went to folks that actually need it.

Which would mean (if I've got the extremely complicated math right) that we would still need the other half of the money required to make ex-pov history.

And, while I'm just guessing here, I don't think it would be a stretch to get the other half of the poverty eradication project cash by spiriting away 1/8 of the annual income from the next 400 or so fine souls on that uber-wealthy list.

So.

In reality, it is my kinda/sorta best guesstimate that we could very likely eradicate extreme poverty by hardly inconveniencing just 500 of our most stupendous global citizens at all.*

Imagine that!


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*Although one or two members of that 'Stupendous 500' might start babbling on about how 'the b*stards took our swagger away!', or some such thing....That, however, would be a risk I, for one, would be willing to take...


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So just who gets the 'LOOT' when they die? Just asking.

Burgess

Silverfox said...

After making the calculations in the UK, it was discovered that a small and seemingly insignificant tax of only half of one pervent on all banking transactions there that don't involve members of the general public, (like bond, derivative and currency trades, or market speculations), would raise at least 200 billion dollars a year.

It's propents called it "the Robin Hood Tax" and the sole intention of it is to eradicate poverty both at home and abroad.

That's just in the UK, so there is no truth at all behind any claims that there isn't enough money, it's simply concentrated in a very few hands that don't want people to know just how much that really is and whose only ambition in life is to use that advantage to even further increase their exceedingly disproportionate share of wealth and property no matter what the consequences are for anyone else.

RossK said...

Burgess--

Gosh didn't even think of the Loot (this is just yearly income).

Heckfire that could probably be used to save the Universe and/or at the very least provide Universal Health and Seniors Care for everyone on the planet.

______
SFox--

Really?

What a concept, taxing the speculative transactions that are killing us all.

(I'll look into it - thanks a lot)

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