We Are Getting Owned

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

According to Oxfam’s Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality, 85 of the world’s richest people own the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population.

Expand the focus to the richest 1%, and Oxfam reports they have about $110 trillion in wealth (46% of the total) which is 65 times the $1.7 trillion (about 0.7% of the total) held by the bottom half of the population.

Makes you feel that “The Owner” is not just a Neal Asher dystopian fantasy.

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3 Responses to We Are Getting Owned

  1. Mike says:
    January 21, 2014 at 9:55 pm

    Here’s the part that I found most alarming. Emphasis mine.

    India has seen its number of billionaires increase from less than 6 to 61 in the past decade, concentrating approximately $250bn among a few dozen people in a country of 1.2 billion. What is striking is the share of the country’s wealth held by this elite minority, which has skyrocketed from 1.8 percent in 2003 to 26 percent in 2008….

  2. Jonathan Stevens says:
    January 22, 2014 at 12:01 pm

    I read a similar statistic earlier this week. The massive gap between rich and poor, both in the U.S. and across the globe, is unbelievable.

  3. Jacob Lohan says:
    January 28, 2014 at 4:16 am

    Hi,

    There is a huge inequality in sharing the wealth between the poor and the rich. We need to bring the communist reign once again and then only the situation may improve.

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