According to Time
magazine, “the world’s 85 richest individuals now own as much as the
poorest half of the 7 billion global population, according to a report released
by Oxfam” last week.
Just contemplate that statistic for a moment. Eighty-five people. Own more than 3,500,000,000
people put together.
Imagine what a gathering of 85 people would look
like. Eighty-five people wouldn’t even fill up the small music club I frequent;
it’s an intimate club and it holds 225 people.
Now imagine a gathering of 3.5 billion (a little
harder to do!). The two groups have the same amount of wealth.
Is it just me or is there something seriously wrong
with this picture?!
The Time magazine article goes on to say, “The
report calls on governments to crackdown on international tax dodgers and
invest in public institutions such as healthcare, as well as implement
progressive taxes and eradicate opaque political structures that encourage
corruption.”
I think we need to go a lot
farther than that. I think we need to rethink our economic system completely.
Tom Toles, the editorial cartoonist for the Washington
Post, is a utopian dreamer like me. In his blog
post today he wrote:
I know economics is really resistant to efforts to make it more equitable and fair and satisfying, but we’re going to have to take another run at it anyway. Marxism was an attempt to do it with a very blunt instrument, all cast iron gears and belching steam and hammers and sickles. It was a colossal mess. But we’re smarter now. Everything else works better, so why not a more sophisticated model of redistributed economic benefits? What would that look like?
It would look like a conscious dedicated plan and effort to get all that grunt work [of labor] into the newly capable hands of computer-guided robot slaves. And distribute some of the profits from that endeavor and some of the Do What You Love (DWYL) opportunities to everyone. We can Do It If We Want To. (DIIWWT)
Here’s Mr. Toles’ cartoon today,
in the same theme:
