An Oxfam briefing
has noted that the richest 85 people in the world control the same
amount of wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population. That
means about seven dozen people (the number of people it would take to
crowd one subway-car) have as much of the world’s wealth as 3.5 billion people put together.
About
half of the world’s wealth is owned by the richest 1% of the population
and that wealth (all $110 trillion of it) is 65 times the wealth of the
bottom half of the population.
***
It’s a counterintuitive idea to
say the least, but it costs a lot to be poor in the United States. When
money is at its tightest, cost-saving choices are often impossible to
make, digging impoverished Americans deeper and deeper into the pit of
day-by-day living.
A
common narrative in today’s political arena is that the nation’s least
fortunate only need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – that
they’re just not working hard enough. What often goes unnoticed,
however, are the overwhelming barriers that those living below the
poverty line face on a daily basis.
No comments:
Post a Comment