The latest Forbes rich list has just been published with Bill Gates coming top with a personal wealth of $86bn. The combined wealth of 2000 billionaires exceeds $7 trillion! I am not really sure what to make out of it. Are we supposed to admire these people for the amount of money they have accumulated or that we should be in owe of such wealth? Far from it. There is really something seriously wrong when people are allowed to build such an incredible wealth. It is obscene when one man like Bill Gates has a personal wealth equivalent to the GDP of a country like Sudan (population 37 million), when the wealth of the richest 2000 people exceeds the combined GDPs of both the UK and Germany.
Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39332823
This wealth comes at a time when there is ever more poverty and hunger in the world and we see people fleeing poor African countries risking their lives making perilous journeys to reach better places to improve their lot. Their miserable existence could easily be much improved if there was a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Interestingly here is a list of the six happiest countries:
Country Rank
Norway 1
Denmark 2
Iceland 3
Switzerland 4
Finland 5
Netherlands 6
Source: http://worldhappiness.report/
And here is a list of the six countries with most billionaires:
Country Billionaires
US 536
China 251
UK 120
Germany 120
India 84
Russia 77
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires
It is interesting to note that despite the abundance of billionaires in the above mentioned countries, none of the countries they belong to, appear in the top of the list of happy countries.
There is no doubt that over the last few decades the gap between rich countries and poor countries has been widening leading in part to the calamitous refugee situation that the world currently faces. But this gap is also widening between the have and have-nots in the rich countries themselves. There is definitely mounting disquiet in the western democracies manifesting itself as a rejection of the establishment, hence the UK Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US, both of which were results of social discontent, but unfortunately in my opinion the wrong results with unsettling consequences.
The world as a whole is moving into uncharted territory. More than ever we need to be doubling our efforts to arrive at more equitable solutions to the distribution of wealth. The accumulation of vast fortunes in the hands of the few is doing nothing but stoking problems for the future. Now it is the time to start by attaching a warning to big wealth. Being a billionaire is nothing to be proud of, it is anti-social and is harmful to social cohesion.