Ummmm.... no. Not really. If you took the total wealth of the worlds billionaires, and combined all the wealth of the worlds millionaires- and divided it between everyone on earth- it would be around $4,000 per person. Wow. All your troubles are solved. You see- world hunger alone- a single problem- would cost an estimated $30-60 billion dollars a year to “solve” and that doesn’t buy you good food- you just aren’t hungry and malnourished.
It’s tempting to look at all that money and say “wow! They could solve everyone’s problems!” But wait.... Thats like saying that because someone was able to buy a $100-200k or more house and a new car that they must have enough money to throw around; or because a poor person got a PlayStation for their birthday or bought a new iPhone they must have money for everything else. Well... no. If you spent $600 million dollars a day, bill gates would be broke in under a year.
Now- tags looking at a simple and flat earth. That doesn’t account for the loss of income that occurs when those wealthy people aren’t spending money. When private jet companies and real estate and contractors and jewelers and high end auto makers and almost the entire high end luxury goods industry collapses overnight as does any industry supporting them.
When the rich no longer have money to donate to charities they already were, foundations, and no money or reason to get the tax breaks from these philanthropic ventures. (I’m not saying that these ventures somehow are “better” than giving 100% away- I am saying that we have to account for the net losses of these things when calculating total gains.)
Now- factor in the damages done. The costs of improvement. As more of the world population lives longer, has a stable environment to reproduce in, can travel and buy goods and with their basic needs cared for want more. As more people become educated and industrialized. Look at China or India to see examples of countries where large populations suddenly have access to more. So now you are increasing the cost of social upkeep- increasing demand and the impact on our environment. More trees cut down, more livestock and commercial farming. More travel and more power plants and more consumer waste. More chemicals and more people needing more space.
Crime likely goes up. Now people have things to steal, reasons to steal. And as we have seen with aid programs in the past- in unstable countries we may be feeding genocide and repression as the military strongmen seize control of the now increased wealth. They recruit and equip and feed armies better. They allocate disproportionately and starve or impoverish the “undesirables.”
The problems money won’t get rid of like religious and ethnic and nationalist conflicts still exist and are better financed, better supported. If you simply give the money away that leaves the wisdom of its use in the hands of the people- many of whom are not qualified or experienced enough to deal with such decisions wisely. If you use it for charities and programs you still are potentially enabling horrors- but there are other issues too.
Attempts at raising the standards of living in certain areas have failed in the past because of things like looting, rejection of principals or traditionalism, violent conflicts within those areas or power struggles and the desire of leaders to maintain their power and so on. How successful these efforts will be depends on many factors.
That doesn’t get in to all the other unintended harms often done through charity. Building homes or schools in underdeveloped nations- but in doing basically destroying the local trades livelihood in providing free labor. Eliminating disease so people live longer, but then having food or other infrastructure taxed by the suddenly larger population. There are more and more. We helped train the Taliban to defend their home from Russian invasion. Here we are decades back and it seems that didn’t work out perfectly.
But you have to admit that the system by far has developed to be an almost financial feudalism. The rich have grown super rich and the number of poor people rose exorbitant.
The truth is, that wealth in all cases means the opposite to many others. The device I'm writing on, my clothes, my furniture and many more are being made by extremely poor people, if not children, in order for me to buy it for a decent price.
WHO is in charge of deciding how to solve problems and what is it isn’t a problem, how the money is spent and why- those become so crucially important. Often in trying to fix problems in haste we create more or future problems. And the fact is- billionaires and such only become rich when everyone else gives them money. As is the case with My previous examples- we create our own monsters. Our problems are a reflection of our choices.
While the rich try to avoid their responsibly to their environment and neighbourhood by evading and avoiding taxes, excluding themselves from solidarity and the rest of the world in gated communities.
I will not start to emphasize on a possible perspective, as I currently see none that politically could be transported to the people (as many of them still believe to be rich someday). But I have to admit that the currently dominant Anglo-American capitalism is not developing in a sustainable direction, it even looks like the end of it may come in our lifetimes.
Tl:dr- if people cared more about other people and less about shit from amazon, cars, clothes, date night, games and tv and all their luxuries- there wouldn’t be ultra wealthy. Every dollar Jeff Bezos has is $1 from a much poorer person given to him because they wanted what he had. If you wanted to help other people more than yourself then we wouldn’t have the problems we have anyway. Billionaires make easy scapegoats. But the worlds wealthiest folks entire fortunes divided is only about $4k per person on earth- and then you encounter complex problems associated with trying to help.
@f_kyeahhamburg- yes. The current state of irresponsible and deregulated capitalism should be obviously unsustainable- but so often now as always with ideas of revolution- many dissenters aren’t trying to take people off the backs of others, but make it so that they can be higher on the stack. Changes and regulation, charity and making the wealthy who benefit from the public and the prosperity generated by their communities have some obligation to pay back in for what they have received sit well with me in theory. Expecting the rich to solve our problems when we created the rich and we created most of the problems we wanted solved through our choices- that doesn’t work philosophically or in terms of plain math. It just isn’t possible.
It is the appetites of the wealthy world that fuel the conflicts and poverty and environmental destruction of the rest- and most of North America, Europe, much of Asia and so on- we forget that many of us who see ourselves as poor or middle class are in the top 10% of not top 1% of wealthiest people on earth. Most people reading this are probably at least in the top 60% if not higher. The way we view billionaires is the way others view our waste and excess and selfishness. More than they’ll ever have and more than we need.
America IS a poster child for this- but through history it’s always been someone. Before it existed and in the infancy of America European powers were the military colonials who subjugated and conquered to feed their wealth and power. We can go back through ages and name the “America” of its day. When or if America ever changes, slides or falls- someone else- China, Russia, someone- will become the new world bully once they are the biggest kid in the playground. It’s a cycle and people don’t want to break it- they want to benefit from it. We aren’t mad someone is doing it- we are mad that we don’t get the spoils.
The truth is, that wealth in all cases means the opposite to many others. The device I'm writing on, my clothes, my furniture and many more are being made by extremely poor people, if not children, in order for me to buy it for a decent price.
I will not start to emphasize on a possible perspective, as I currently see none that politically could be transported to the people (as many of them still believe to be rich someday). But I have to admit that the currently dominant Anglo-American capitalism is not developing in a sustainable direction, it even looks like the end of it may come in our lifetimes.