Owning the world
19/02/2014
- Opinión
Several days ago, a press report surfaced that was among the most astounding I’ve ever seen.
The headline bore a curious equation: “85=3.5, 000,000,000.”
At first, it made no sense until I read the body of the article. It explained, eighty-five people in the U.S. had wealth and assets equal to three and half billion people the world over.
I had to re-read it; eighty-five individuals had personal wealth equal to three and a half billion people – or, half the world.
Isn’t that amazing?
Isn’t that unbelievable?
Isn’t that astonishing?
If ever we doubted how unequally wealth is distributed in the world, along comes this fact.
If the Occupy Movement hadn’t been beaten back into the shadows, their remarkable call, “We are the 99%!”, or “Down with the 1%!” would have to be revisited.
For instead of 1%, it’d be one hundredth of 1%, 85 people? Maybe a thousandth.
Rome – infamous for its rich and corrupt Senate, never saw such inequality as this.
Marx, for all of his acumen, never saw this coming.
This vast wealth is especially obscene in an era of austerity, when budgets are cut, schools are closed, and prisons experience population booms.
The politicians, who serve this tiny, wealthy class, cut more and more, as Congress fills its own ranks with more and more millionaires.
They are those who scream, ‘No New Taxes!’ on the wealthiest people in the world.
--©’14maj
https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/83280
