In an age of austerity and financial meltdown, where people are living hand to mouth and worrying how to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families, there’s only a few things that you can rely on to never change: one is death, the other is taxes, and the other is that the rich will keep on getting richer even if the world burns and the earth dies screaming.
When they’re not busy ripping people off and paying slave wages, getting even richer is what the filthy rich do, and it’s a hard habit for these craven and money-chasing souls to shake.
A recent Oxfam report suggests that a mere 1 percent of the population holds half the world’s wealth. To break that figure down into terms we can all hate, that translates as 73 million people owning just a much as the other 7.3 billion have to share.
Who are these 73 million people you may wonder. Well, they’re certainly selfish souls who never paid much attention to Jesus Christ’s parable of the five loaves and two fish, but even these greedy guzzlers and worshippers of Mammon could learn a thing or two from the 62 richest people on the planet.
These plucky 62 philanthropists one and all own as much wealth as the poorer half of the global population combined. Or as they’re so tenderly described, “the bottom half of humanity.”
Yes, sir, the rich are getting richer, and there’s none richer than the world’s richest three men. So here’s looking at you software mogul Bill Gates, Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim Helu, and investor Warren Buffett. These three musketeers have a combined net worth of US$230 billion, according to Forbes. The question is why do they need it, what do they need it for, and what kind of world are we living in which makes such an accumulation of insane wealth possible?
A world gone wrong perhaps, or just one consumed by greed and rampant capitalism. Of course, if you dare criticize the grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and social ills that follow in its trail, you’ll be accused, usually by the very wealthy, of being poisoned by the politics of envy, harboring the resentment of the peasant, or being bone idle and jealous of your betters who have made a comfortable life for themselves by enslaving others to a lifetime of soul-destroying tedium and mind-paralyzing labor, for little or no reward.
Yet, the concentration of wealth is killing the world’s economy and will eventually put it six foot under. The super — let’s call them filthy — rich probably realize this but don’t care. When the revolution comes, it will be televised, but solely for their entertainment, as they watch from the comfort of their super yachts and fortress retreats, with cocktail in hand, the carnage and chaos their greed has caused.
It may sound like hyperbole, but where else is this merry go round going to end?
You can chase the dollar and read more here!
No comments:
Post a Comment