OXFAM: "100 richest people could end world poverty"

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Exactly Ed.

While some folks on here argue about how hard they have / had it...and the value of hard work and perseverance in elevating themselves out of poverty... there is a small but separate class of people in the country (world) that control a larger and larger piece of the pie. And make their own rules.

Think about it: "The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012". That's $2.4 billion (on average) per person...added last year alone (or 2.4 thousand-million dollars per person...in 2012 alone). The Top 1% Are Taking In More off the Nation's Income Than at Any Other Time Since the 1920s: Not only are the wealthiest 1% of Americans taking home a tremendous portion of the national income, but their share of this income is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression.

So what we're seeing now isn't the way that it's always been (or has to be).

To put things in perspective, the bottom 80% of the country owns only 7% of the wealth. The Top 1% own half of the country's Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds and the bottom 50% of Americans own only 0.5% of these investments. But I guess all of those people are lazy, uneducated, unmotivated or otherwise.

So where did that money come from? Hard work right? Investment bankers, corporate lawyers, hedge-fund and private-equity managers have displaced corporate executives at the top of the income ladder. The richest 25 hedge-fund investors earned more than $25 billion, roughly six times as much as all the chief executives of companies in the S&P 500 stock index combined.

Goldman Sachs has been famously described as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

That people are successful isn't the problem. The problem is that the kind of wealth redistribution (from the poor and middle class to the ultra-rich) that's occurred as a result of repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (Yes in the Clinton Presidency) and other policies is hurting working class Americans.

Matt


flowerpower said:
I think some of you guys are still missing the point. Yes, poverty and wealth are relative and we should all be greatful for what we have, however, that isn't the issue. Everyone seems to be ignoring the elephant on the room. This isn't about red and blue states, public versus private education, social welfare or black and white versus smart T.V.'s. The issue is the EXTREME wealth, power and influence acquired illegally by a small group of individuals and what that missing $ represents to the rest of us. This is organized crime NOT the American dream



You also miss the point but you are right about the rhetoric and yes, I said 'millions' without checking any statistical data in order to make my point. However, I think you'll agree that no amount of hard work will elevate the average person into a position of earning that kind of money. So, forget the 'haves' and the 'have nots' and focus on US(American citizens) and THEM (an international criminal network of money launderers, drug traffickers, shylocks and murderers with influential ties to the highest levels of government and industry). That, is not rhetoric.





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DavidW said:
This is all well and good. IMO education should be a right, but how does someone in a $$$ poor demographic, who maybe also has a family to support, pay for food rent etc while taking advantage of that?
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Higher education is far from a right. I'm a heterosexual Caucasian male with no disabilities raising my two kids. My class registration date has always been the last possible which means 99% of classes are full when I try to register(fact). I qualify for no discounts or special tuition. No one gives me a ride to school or supports me, no one helps me with my homework. (I dropped out of school in 8th grade to get a job to support my family in Georgia and later went back and got my GED to put myself through college. That's the reality people like you have created for me. Yet I go, maintain my career, keep my kids engaged and doing well in school and have never gotten less than an A in any class.

Explain to me why I should care about others with more systematic advantages to succeed and yet choose not to? Or pay more taxes because I make more a year than some? And don't tell me I'm the exception because I'm not no matter what you may have heard.
 
ecoli73 said:
Now you are far from where you are started...

Top 100 riches people...for example bill gates is not a criminal.


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I don't know much about Bill Gates other that the fact that he is philanthropists working hard to vaccinate the third world. I'll admit, his intentions seemed good to me until I realized that he is also an strong advocate of population control.
“The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”
I don't quite understand how disease prevention decreases population growth but maybe someone can enlighten me.
And just some background on forced sterilization: "The issue of forced sterilization is neither small nor new in African according to the international lobby group, Stop Torture in Health."
http://allafrica.com/stories/201208240201.html
No, I'm not accusing Bill Gates of trying to use vaccines as a means of population control. It's coming right out of he horses mouth. http://youtu.be/T9vZLlJhI7o
Reproductive health services? I don't know whether he's a billionaire philanthropist or a genocidal elitist.

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