Switzerland Sets Example for Income Equality

EQUITY: the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality.

Pennies From Heaven
Johann Wagener 3-12-13

Switzerland Sets The Example For Income Equality

The world crisis, which was entirely engineered by speculative finance in the U.S. and erupted in 2008, coupled two years later with the crisis of sovereign debt, an entirely European affair. This has led to the unprecedented blackmail and to the uniform medicine of austerity, with Greece as the clearest example of its impact on the people.

Viewed in this context, news that the 100 richest people in the world added 240 billion dollars to their wealth in 2012 is even more obscene. Clearly, they had no need of that money, in human terms.

The top two percent of the world’s population (60 million people) now possesses as much wealth as 2.5 billion people. The top 0.01 percent (600,000 persons) has as much wealth as two billion people.

There are now 1,200 billionaires in the world. Simultaneously, we are facing a serious food problem. Every day, there are 192,300 new mouths to feed, 70 million every year. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) the reserves of food have gone down by 2.6 percent, while the cost keeps going up (cereals by 10 to 35 percent, depending on the product).

Yet, according to the World Bank, we throw away 40 percent of food in the rich countries. So, with the 240 billion piled up in a year by the 100 richest people, we could eliminate many of the world’s problems.