85 peoples as wealthy as 3.5 billions peoples

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Nobody's even talking about just handing it out by throwing cash out of a cargo plane or something. I'm talking about investments. Think of the insane amount of scientific progress we could make with trillions of dollars in research on something other than data mining and weapons manufacturing.

I would rather see the wealth distributed in a way that allows the greatest number of people to live comfortable from it. Having most of it in the hands of 1%, 5%, or even 15% is unacceptable.

As someone pointed out, that is about $10,000 of wealth per person. I think that number is conservative, but I'll go with it. Thats more money then a large portion of the world's inhabitants will ever earn in their lifetimes. It would make a big difference to the vast majority of people.

MaxOOO, you are in the United States, and since nearly all Americans are in the top 5% in the world, and many are in the top 1%, then how do you propose that we best share your wealth with the billions of poor people in the world ?

Compared to the rest of the world Americans are the 1%
http://www.policymic.com/articles/2636/ ... -all-the-1

Americans make up 1/2 the world's 1%
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/ec ... d_richest/

Occupy Wallstreet Protestors - you are probably part of the 1%
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... he-1-.aspx

America is the 1%
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-U-S.html

Just tax the filthy rich bastards, and use the money for foreign aid, instead of fighting wars. Problem solved.

Bastards?

Anyone in the world who makes over $34,000 USD after taxes is in the 1%, so how much tax do you propose ?

Progressive tax on a curve all the way to the top of the chart. Tax the people who have too much money. Not the ones who have too little. Redistribute the wealth from the top back down to the bottom. From the people who have no need for it, to the people who will spend it and stimulate the economy.

I am all in favor of the worldwide reduction of starvation. I also think China has a record of being some of the smartest people. Their rise from poverty will produce good things.

What I am talking about is the ones that missed the rise in income from globalization, and are still living on less than a dollar a day.

Their raw numbers are missing from the graphs, but I think they outnumber the Chinese.

The slums around south American cities, whole African countries, Nigeria where half the population is under fifteen, and AIDs has reduced life to forty years. More are in southeast Asia.

They have not benefited from a global market, and they are where most of the world population increase is coming from.

They are also the source of new disease. HIV went international because of a long development time. Ebola is like Parrot Fever, it kills so fast it stops it's own spread. Five million Americans died of AIDs, fifteen million are infected.

So we do have a direct and local cost from bottom of the world poverty.

In Nigeria most income is spent on food, and the population will triple in just a few years. This is the setup for the next world super bug.

Giving food aid, money and guns to the government, are not going to change the outcome.

Where both wealth and poverty exist, Brazil, and others, the gangs from the slums are rounded up by the police and army, and are never seen again. Rio has been doing sweeps for years, when crime spills out of the slums into the tourist areas.

They do not cause the girls to vanish, as they are part of the tourist market.

The cities are overfull, they are ringed by cardboard shacks, packed tight, and there is no upward mobility.

Even the developing economies like Brazil produce people much faster than jobs, housing.

This is recent, they are not from the city, but from the country where overpopulation has lead to starvation.

They come to the city as a last resort, with no education, often speaking another language, where they know no one.

This is the dirty bottom of civilization, where life is short and cheap. In response, it becomes fruitful, and breeds faster than it dies.

These are not people who will be lifted by global trade. Nothing we have done has improved the life of the bottom billion, and they have the fastest population growth.

They do pose the greatest threat to world health, a breeding ground for superbugs, and for the view that just rounding them up and making them vanish is becoming accepted.

This is what drives illegal immigration, now a worldwide problem, as Vietnamese are sneaking into Southern China looking for work.

Health care, education, birth control, would be good for girls that stayed home, remained virgins until married, and would be good for girls with less stable lives.

Something has to happen to get them up to the bottom rung where global trade could increase their incomes.

Their reality is bleak, anything would help.

I would not want to be a lower middle class Chinese, spending 60% of my income on food. Yet they are the best that has come of global trade.

We still have many problems, but a growing population makes them all worse.

The bottom 20% accounts for almost 100% of population increase.

Half are males, half of the rest are children, so 5% are girls who will have children.

If they can delay childbearing until after twenty, it would solve a lot of the worlds problems.

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