World’s 100 richest earned enough in 2012 to end global poverty 4 times over

[Mr. Ambien]

If you want to compare the 'psychological' traits of inanimate or conceptual objects with those of a psychopath, I think toasters are a much better example.

Corporations can actually have meaningful relationships with others (might be rare, but it does happen). Toasters? Never! The longest relationship they ever have is about 30 seconds (unless you want to count the relationship they have with the wall socket but perhaps we shouldn't go there...)

And not once has my toaster EVER apologized to me for burning my bread.

[Buddhas Hand]

If you want to compare the 'psychological' traits of inanimate or conceptual objects with those of a psychopath, I think toasters are a much better example.

Corporations can actually have meaningful relationships with others (might be rare, but it does happen). Toasters? Never! The longest relationship they ever have is about 30 seconds (unless you want to count the relationship they have with the wall socket but perhaps we shouldn't go there...)

And not once has my toaster EVER apologized to me for burning my bread.

[Dral]

[Samuel Påhlsson]

Waiting on robin hood.

[key2thecup]

Waiting on robin hood.

[taxi]

1) A 60% increase over the last 20 years, really isn't that much. That more or less just inflation.

2) Also, even if you through that money at "poverty" you wouldn't end that. There are complex geo-political forces at work here. Not to mention local issues like discrimination, class/caste systems, corruption, etc...

That being said, I'm sure there are many people in that top 100 doing less than ethical/legal things to stay on top.

[Lancaster]

The rich donates the most amount of money to charity too.

[aGENT]

I'd love to see numbers on how many self-made "Bill Gates'" there are versus trust fund babies who've gotten richer off of teams of lawyers, investment/market experts and the exploitation of the poor...

[ronthecivil]

I'd love to see numbers on how many self-made "Bill Gates'" there are versus trust fund babies who've gotten richer off of teams of lawyers, investment/market experts and the exploitation of the poor...

[ronthecivil]

I must be missing something in the math here. They say that $240B would eliminate extreme poverty four times over, but in the article notes it refers to another article that states Jeff Sachs has estimated that it would cost $175 billion a year for 2 years to end extreme poverty.

$175B for 2 years would be $350B, four times over would be $1.4T which is a great deal more than $240B.

[Pouria]

240 billion earned by 100 individuals?

When you get to the point where you're making a billion a year, you'd think it's about time to retire. At that point, it goes beyond feeding your family, having nice things, etc., etc., and becomes a verifiable sickness.

There's only so much to go around. Every billionaire is a thousand less millionaires.

[ronthecivil]

Its suggestions for leaders due at the Davos summit include:

• Closure of tax havens around the world

[taxi]

Should that occur I recommend that Canada become a tax haven and watch the investment dollars flow in. There's a reason countries do this and unless you want to invade the sovereignty of every nation and set their economic policy for them good luck.

Income tax is progressive everywhere I have ever seen. Now if someone wanted to increase dividend and capital gains taxes to make it so that such income is taxed at the same rate one would at least have to do that progressively as well as having people invest is something that should very much be encouraged. I would have no problem having to pay a higher capital gains tax so long as the first half million or so was tax free. Ditto for having the dividend tax credit erode and have it count as regular income but you would have to allow the first 100k or so work under the old system so that retirees that built a next egg to live off of can still get a healthy income while the trust fund babies would still be paying much, much more. A more than reasonable compromise.

[aGENT]

Obviously a significant inheritance tax (or call it a death tax I don't care) that counts the money as income with a decent exemption (100k? 1 Million?, Basically enough to pass on an average family home?) so that it really only hits the oligarchs is an obvious solution.

If someone super rich didn't want to have the government take the money they still have the power to give away the majority of their fortune to charities (which is precisely what the more famous self made billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are doing.)

[ronthecivil]

I certainly agree with that idea, heck I'd be more than happy to not start charging until even $2-3m (given the price of local real estate).

Not really what I was getting at though.

My point was that people keep defending the super rich as these brilliant, hard working risk takers who drive our economies and industries. I suspect the truth is much different and while there certainly are the odd "outlier" Bill Gates out there who truly worked hard, innovated and became vastly successful, that is not the norm. I suspect most of the truly WEALTHY people out there had a head start due to their fathers, grandfathers etc innovation and hard work, not their own. That they manipulate more than they innovate and if the bailouts and banks have shown us anything...actually take very little risk of their own (but plenty of ours).

They've duped people in to believing a lie and they do not deserve our admiration, gratitude and certainly not our defense of their ill-gotten status.

[ronthecivil]

In Canada anyways, there is a very good reason the dividend tax is lower. You have to pay the corporate tax on profits first. The effective tax for income earned by dividends and income earned as an individual is almost the exact same.

Basically, if you were to incorporate yourself, you would pay part of the tax when the corporation earns the money. You pay the rest as a dividend tax when you pull the money out of the corporation.

For example, hypothetically, if your individual tax rate was 40% and the dividend tax rate was 20%. If you were to restructure as a corporation, the corporation would pay taxes first. You would then make up the difference with the dividend tax, bringing an effective tax rate of around 40%. If you were to pay 40% dividend tax, you would be double paying, as you'd have to pay corporate taxes first while the money was still in the corporation.

[aGENT]

Sure, no conflict there.

Simply saying that if we implemented an inheritance tax that it could be dodged by giving the money to recognized charities. In other words if they don't like how the government spends the money then they can give it to a group that does spend it the way they want.

Even then, unless your dad is Warren Buffet (he is giving away 99% of his fortune and wouldn't even loan his daughter 40k to reno her kitchen) if your a kid of a billionaire expecting a huge inheritance, even if it was taxed at the top marginal rate (about 40%) you will still be a billionaire at the end of the day. But at least everyone else would get a good piece of that pie.

[aGENT]

To add to that... I'm no more deserving of those things than that poor, parent-less African. I'm simply more fortunate to have the opportunity. I no more deserve to be put on a pedestal by him than a wealthy person here does by me.

[Buddhas Hand]

Yeah my comments weren't really directed at you. I like the concept you posted.

I just get tired of the brainwashed billionaire sympathizers coming in here and defending billionaires. It's sad. Those people haven't worked harder or smarter to get where they are. They were mostly just fortunate to be born in to wealth. Not a lot different than how you or I were lucky to be born in Canada as opposed to some war torn African country.

I have a nice standard of living, luxuries, a car, a house, good food etc because I was born in a country that affords me those things that I'm able to maintain with some work, effort and smarts. I have no delusions that if I was born in a less fortunate country, regardless of how smart I might be or hard I worked that there'd still be a pretty good chance that I'd be poor, parent-less at a young age etc. It's a game of opportunity and the game is fixed in favour of the wealthy.

[Ghostsof1915]

The problem is that somewhere we diverged from Adam Smith's model. The invisible hand of competition, which would keep companies in line, has been replaced by the "Business is War" model.

We all know what happens in war? Casualties. People are looking for loopholes instead of building better products and providing better services. There's also collusion for example Gas Prices. We have different gas companies, but they all charge the same price for the fuel.

When all you do is look at the spreadsheets and look at nothing but money, the human factors are being missed. We are regressing back to sort of the age of empires where the few control all the money. Companies will fire 1000's of employees so they can pay pennies to people in third world nations to make the same goods. Who benefits? Certainly not the 1000's of employees that lost decent jobs.

But those decent paying jobs lost means people have less money, so they can spend less. It's a vicious circle.

This trend can't continue because like other things, it's not sustainable. But that means little to the get rich quick crowd.