WTF: World Statistics

...and the poor get poorer. It's not always true, but the "golden days" of laissez-faire and economic exploitation are back in a big way! And by "big" I mean horribly oppressive and soul-crushing.

The exact headline of an article from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm

 

Come on! No matter how much harder these top 2% supposedly worked (which is certainly not universally true), they do NOT deserve half of the wealth in the world.

If you read the article, you know 3 things: a) the data is from 2000, b) the study is worldwide, and c) the survey calculated wealth not income. This includes things like land and other assets. The article also went on to say that "the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth." If this isn't a convincing arguement for some degree of wealth redistribution, I don't know what is! How can that arrangement be at all fair, even if the top 2% of people put in anywhere near 1250 times more total effort than the poorest 50% of the earth. (The 2% has 50%, whereas the lowest 50% has 1%. The poor people put in 1/50 "effort" per percentage of people. By this calculation, the rich people put in 25 "effort" per percentage of people. 25 is 1250 times more than 1/50, or .02.)

At the very very least, we should tax these "harder working" fatcats to pay for social services for all: higher education and health care. Think of it as forced charity, except with free services for you too.