Tech moguls dominate Oxfam's rich people Hateful 8

Well, actually it would. By mathematical identity, it would double their wealth. Most people would call that a big difference.

"The man who dies rich, dies disgraced" - Andrew Carnegie. I honestly wish the obscenely rich would feel more of an obligation to share their money. I don't know of any sensible way of forcing them to do so, but naming and shaming is perfectly reasonable.

um... the next 8 would (by definition) have less money combined that this 8 (significantly less, given Gates' enormous lead), and you'd have doubled the cash of the poorest half. So at best they'd have as much as the poorest 25%, but in actual fact somewhat lower (the next 8 have about 30% less combined wealth than the top 8).

So yeah, we'd go from a situation where 8 people have as much as 51% of the rest of the population combined, to one where the top 8 people have about as much as the bottom 16%. That's a fairly big change, as it happens, not least because you've doubled the wealth of half the population and lifted about a billion people out of poverty in the process.

Will that change things?

Well, in most cases, that money started off in your pocket (and the pockets of people like you) and ended up in their pockets either because you volunteered to pay over the odds for their wares or because they were subsequently-convicted monopolists and you didn't have much choice in the matter.

Either way, even assuming all that money eventually ends up being spent on philanthropic purposes, would you not prefer to make your own decision about where to make your charitable donations rather than giving the money to Bill Gates and getting him to do it for you?

I've taken a look at Forbes 400. Top 10 richest have ~ 523 billion between them. If you divided it all between everyone around the world, everyone would get about 70 bucks.

I suppose if you took all the money of everyone and divided it up, you'd still end up with some 120 dollars per person. That money isn't very useful in the middle of a jungle or desert.

How far does that go? A few weeks later, everyone gets their paychecks and we're back to current wealth distribution.

Digging a few thousand wells or building some schools goes much further than that.

The richest 10%

Only eight people, I thought, someone like the BOFH could have the lot of them gift wrapped in carpets and rapidly disappearing in a lime pit over a weekend given a bit of planning time. OK, it would only result in some wealth distribution at the very top, but at least it might start encouraging philanthropy.

And why stop at such a small number of people, why not the whole top 10% - surely a doable number for a suitably Machiavellian charity? Then I looked at the figures, you only need 60 or 70 thousand USDs of net wealth to be in the top 10% of wealthiest people in the world - help, my mortgage is paid off, I'll be on my own hit list! The top 10% own about 80% of the worlds wealth.

TLDR: If you are in the top 10% of wealthy people the moral obligations on you are much the same as those on a billionaire.

Re: Hmm...

This would be a lot more convincing if 85% of the money the billionaires have given to charity didn't come from just Gates and Buffett. Also, most of their totals are spread over decades (Buffett has been giving to charity for 50 years, Gates for 20).

So, another way to say the same thing is 'Oxfam does more for charity in a single year than 6 of the 8 wealthiest people on Earth, despite being vastly poorer than any of them'. Or 'Oxfam spent more money on charity in January than the second richest man in the world has given in his whole life'.

Funny how adding a little context changes things, isn't it?

Re: "They've got as much money as half the world, scolds charity"

1998 it sounds like

Re: "They've got as much money as half the world, scolds charity"

Your names Aryn Rand and I claim my five pounds. :)

> Billionaires spending billions on "selfish things" is just one way of their money being re-distributed,

One area where I've come across the very very rich is in classic cars. Some of these are worth staggering amounts of money, but one result of their values having shot skywards is that a lot of them have had a lot a work done on them in recent years. That means people with old fashion engineering and craft skills are able to earn a living. Watching someone make a complex compound curved wing on a English wheel is a sight to behold, these skills are being kept alive because suddenly they are in demand. Without there being people with the means to pay the wages a lot of these skills would die out of the next few years as those old enough to have used them retired or died out themselves.

As the old adage goes

"tis the duty of the monied men to pay the wages of the artisan"

The pisser is that it means a car I hoped I might one day be able to afford is now beyond my wildest dreams.

Re: spending billions on "selfish things"

Bill Gates had a great idea and made millions from endless versions of DOS, Windows and their Office Suites etc. Tim Berners-Lee had a great idea and gave it to the world.

One is a squillionaire, the other is not - funny old world isn't it

Re: Intentions over words

Maybe if the Oxfam directors put their money where their mouths are and reduced their remunerations to to the average wage then they might have something to say. Until then their words just add to the hot air being generated by the politicians.

Re: Hands up if you've got debts

There are loads of people in first world countries with negative wealth, like students with massive loans to repay, people stuck with negative-equity houses....

The truly poorest are usually the ones without enough income to get a loan.

Re: Hands up if you've got debts @ skippybing

I've got debts, and y'know what I am still probably richer than a large percentage of the bottom. Seriously the realy poor don't even have bank accounts, why would they when they do get money it goes on immediate priorities. I've been in shanty towns under flyovers in some parts of SEA, and they are still probably richer than say a lot living in slums in places like Delhi.

Some debts balanced off by a income coming in to pay them, and still keep me fed, warm, clothed, in a country that provides free healthcare and education. Does not by any means make me poor in global comparisons.

Re: Soros

.... because he's not one of the 8 richest men on Earth (he's like 19th or something), so it wouldn't make much sense to list him in a comparison between the top 8 and the bottom 50%?

Re: The issue is not how rich the rich are...

BUT

If you are going to make the worlds poor richer then you HAVE to make someone in the world poorer. Normally this is done by making the middle class poorer.... after all the rich run the countries (like the UK) and don't want to lose their wealth and the middle class delude themselves into thinking that because they have a mortgage they are somehow not poor... despite the fact their debt outstrips their assets.

To be honest I have never understood why we think it ok to pay mega millions to pop stars, football stars, politicians, people that get their boobs out on a tv show etc etc etc and even the likes of Clarkson and that redd headed nitwit that followed onto top gear.

Why we are unable to pay people like engineers and production workers who do something useful I have never worked out (Germany at least pays the engineers a little better than we do).

Ultimately though the fact is quite simple, the rich each year bag a bigger and bigger part of the worlds wealth, they horde it and everyone else is the poorer for it.