The world's richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, Oxfam said Thursday, ahead of a G20 summit in Brazil where taxing the super-rich tops the agenda.
The top 10% includes the majority of people in the western world. We have been lied to by the select few above us that we have more in common with them than we do with the bottom 90% in the rest of the world.
In terms of lifestyle we definitely do. To go from a retail worker living in a typical US apartment to a jet-setting billionaire with a superyacht is a big jump in quality of life but it’s FAR less than going from a dirt-floored shack in central Africa to the apartment in the US.
Both the retail worker and the billionaire can enjoy healthy food, clean drinking water, access to medicine, electricity, a shower any time, a smartphone with unlimited data, a home PC with unlimited internet, Netflix, Amazon, Uber Eats… These are all luxuries beyond what even a king from two centuries ago could dream of, and they’re available to anyone on a minimum wage retail job and a bit of budgeting skills.
Meanwhile the poor shack-dweller faces unimaginable grinding poverty, no running water, no medicine, rampant disease, war, slavery (conflict minerals) and prostitution.
The problem with billionaires isn’t how luxurious their yachts are. It’s how much power their wealth gives them and how unaccountable they are for it. Heck, you can probably see posts on Lemmy every day about the stuff Elon Musk is doing.
The top 10% includes the majority of people in the western world. We have been lied to by the select few above us that we have more in common with them than we do with the bottom 90% in the rest of the world.
In terms of lifestyle we definitely do. To go from a retail worker living in a typical US apartment to a jet-setting billionaire with a superyacht is a big jump in quality of life but it’s FAR less than going from a dirt-floored shack in central Africa to the apartment in the US.
Both the retail worker and the billionaire can enjoy healthy food, clean drinking water, access to medicine, electricity, a shower any time, a smartphone with unlimited data, a home PC with unlimited internet, Netflix, Amazon, Uber Eats… These are all luxuries beyond what even a king from two centuries ago could dream of, and they’re available to anyone on a minimum wage retail job and a bit of budgeting skills.
Meanwhile the poor shack-dweller faces unimaginable grinding poverty, no running water, no medicine, rampant disease, war, slavery (conflict minerals) and prostitution.
The problem with billionaires isn’t how luxurious their yachts are. It’s how much power their wealth gives them and how unaccountable they are for it. Heck, you can probably see posts on Lemmy every day about the stuff Elon Musk is doing.