Author Topic: 69 = 3,500,000,000  (Read 3642 times)

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Offline Colwyn

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69 = 3,500,000,000
« on: January 18, 2016, 10:52:46 AM »
Oxfam has estimated that the 69 wealthiest individuals on Earth own the same amount of wealth between them as is shared around among the poorer half of the total global population of 7 billion. It is difficult to get my head around that statistic. But it is just an extreme outcome of current economic forces that sees the rich getting vastly richer and increasing the divide between themselves and the rest of the population. In the UK this has been happening under successive governments of different party allegiance and is speeding up. Can it be justified? Can anything be done to change things?



Offline kevin3

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2016, 12:30:18 PM »

  A very complicated subject. The world needs go getters,dreamers,inventors, gamblers, ect. I think when individuals amass

  a huge fortune and purely keep it within their family circle it is morally unjustifiable. But, they created it.!

  Others, like Gates, Branson ect are a force for the good and I think fully entitled to personal wealth. 116,000 people have jobs

  thanks to Gates creativity.Branson has given 50,000 people the chance to support their families. Both individuals have given £billions

  to Charitable causes. And by the same token, what right have politicians, who often have never created anything and suffer from envy,

  got to try to take it off them.??  Shaming people doesn't always work.  Dunno really Colwyn.

Offline usedbustickets

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2016, 20:40:31 PM »
Whose this Saint Branson bloke you are talking about?  If it's that bearded tax dodging, off shore front companies, sex fiend, I'll keep all the litter off the streets Maggie, jack up the train fares (west and now east coast), I'll do the lottery for nothing (oh no you will not thankfully they said when a fit and proper person test was applied to him and his companies), anti worker and whilst he may have 50,000 employees, they soon fall out of love with him.  Let's not get started on his stupid publicity inspired stunts that he involves himself and others in, where the principal purpose is to get free adverts fro the Virgin brand.  And the only time I am aware of his charity giving, was when he was trying to help out some storm hit islands, nothing to do with him having a number of holiday homes in the area.  Come on be honest if he was giving money to charity in any large amount, he would have soon told us about, as he tells us about all the other sainted activities he involves himself in.

He is a man who promises much for the community and staff alike - especially when he needs to, such as when he is after some indirect government contract or favour (e,g the train franchises (license to print money and dodge tax) or to weaken BA on the flights across the Atlantic) - and like his tax payments, they soon get lost somewhere in the delivery.  Horrible, horrible man.

Offline Highlander

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2016, 20:58:23 PM »
UBT - I have just been reading up on Branson. Would you care to comment on his work with the following

The Elders
International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
Branson School of Entrepreneurship
Global Zero (campaign)
African Wildlife Foundation


(Yes - I was reading Wikipedia)

Offline kevin3

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2016, 21:57:07 PM »

  Yep, some horrible horrible  people in the UK.!!

Offline Hamlet

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2016, 06:56:32 AM »
Whose this Saint Branson bloke you are talking about?  If it's that bearded tax dodging, off shore front companies, sex fiend, I'll keep all the litter off the streets Maggie, jack up the train fares (west and now east coast), I'll do the lottery for nothing (oh no you will not thankfully they said when a fit and proper person test was applied to him and his companies), anti worker and whilst he may have 50,000 employees, they soon fall out of love with him.  Let's not get started on his stupid publicity inspired stunts that he involves himself and others in, where the principal purpose is to get free adverts fro the Virgin brand.  And the only time I am aware of his charity giving, was when he was trying to help out some storm hit islands, nothing to do with him having a number of holiday homes in the area.  Come on be honest if he was giving money to charity in any large amount, he would have soon told us about, as he tells us about all the other sainted activities he involves himself in.

He is a man who promises much for the community and staff alike - especially when he needs to, such as when he is after some indirect government contract or favour (e,g the train franchises (license to print money and dodge tax) or to weaken BA on the flights across the Atlantic) - and like his tax payments, they soon get lost somewhere in the delivery.  Horrible, horrible man.

You're not a fan then, UBT?

Offline usedbustickets

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2016, 09:30:47 AM »
UBT - I have just been reading up on Branson. Would you care to comment on his work with the following

The Elders
International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
Branson School of Entrepreneurship
Global Zero (campaign)
African Wildlife Foundation


(Yes - I was reading Wikipedia)
H you've answered it yourself, Wikipedia section written by Branson's publicity department.  Now I've commented on that little list, perhaps you might comment on some of my objections to the man.  Which were non Wikipedia sourced, or indeed any other online source, just stored away over the years in the old UBT brain for future use. 

Offline Colwyn

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2016, 10:50:41 AM »
I am not particularly interested in whether or not some extremely wealthy person is wrapped in moral sanctity or not. The figures I cited compare those of economic-financial elite with the experience of those of the lower half of the world economy. I am not suggesting that all people should have the same share of the world's wealth. But I cannot believe that it is an economic necessity to motivate the elite that each of them should have, on average, 500 million times more wealth than those individuals in the bottom half - and that this gap should increase, year after year, all over the world.

Offline Stuart T

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2016, 11:16:27 AM »
Apart from inherited wealth, I can't help but wonder that if the world's riches were to be evenly split across the 7 billion of us, the type of person who represents the current 69 top earners wouldn't take long to be at the top again.

From the industrialists and land grabbers of the past to today's dot com people and global entrepreneurs, some of us/them are just "built that way".

What they do with their riches, ill - founded or otherwise, is surely up them and it is on these actions, perhaps, that we make our personal judgments.

I don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body and I'm a fairly risk - averse person so it wouldn't be me up there.

Back to the lottery for me.......hoping to win enough for a Nissan Qashqai!


Offline Colwyn

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Re: 69 = 3,500,000,000
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2016, 12:02:07 PM »
500 million times more wealth
That should have been 50 million. An errant zero snuck in from somewhere.




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