Editorials

#YEAR12PROBLEMS

16 January 2017

By Lauren E. White

Wealth inequality – it’s real and you can’t deny it

Today the media and the internet seem to be captivated by the story that eight billionaires are as rich as the poorest half of the world’s population.

It’s as if they deliberately forgot that Oxfam report that said that 62 people own as much as half the world. Spookily, that report was dated on 16th January 2016 – an exact year ago.

In light of today’s findings, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are named in this elite billionaire list. While Bill Gates and Zuckerberg have given to and help out charities, they have a collective wealth of $119.6 billion. If we put this into perspective, it is quite shocking. You need $29.39 billion to bump the incomes of 5.64 billion people to just $10 a day. This means that there is enough money in two people to end a large chunk of global poverty.

The latest buzz on the internet shouldn’t be underestimated. It is a disgusting fact that there are eight people who could solve global poverty. And what have they actually done?

Bill Gates has admittedly helped a lot with poverty. However, he has a net worth of $75 billion. What can one person actually do with all of that money? And why is it that he can be so rich while there are people in this world who literally live on what they find in a scrapheap?

Global wealth inequality is, I’m afraid to say, very real. The 1% of the world who can afford to buy our houses about one million times over (not a real statistic, but probably near enough to the truth) keep on accumulating while those at the bottom keep on losing out.

The gap is only getting wider.

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