A "Davos" World In Which The 85 Richest People Have The Same Wealth As Half The World's Population -- By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge

There is something morbidly gruesome and ironic in having the world's wealthiest people, among them the presidents and central bank heads of the world's most "advanced" nations, as well as the CEOs of the biggest corporations, sitting down in Davos - a place where the press passes alone cost thousands of dollars - and discussing global inequality: the same inequality that their policies and principles are responsible for. It is even more morbid when one considers that according to a recent Oxfam report, one that will be used in Davos itself, the disparity in wealth between the haves and the have nots has reached absolutely record proportions, surpassing any previous inequality gaps seen before and during the Great Depression.

Which brings us to the topic of wealth.

By now everyone is familiar with the popular wealth pyramid, which shows that "29 million, or 0.6% of those with any actual assets under their name, own $87.4 trillion, or 39.3% of all global assets."

One can extend that rule of thumb to say that almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

However, for the best visual of the disparity between the haves and the have nots we go to Oxfam once more, which just penned the soundbite of the day, and possibly, of the week for suddenly very bleeding-heart Davos:


That's right: "the 85 richest people own the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest people" ... aka half the world's population.

Naturally this should come as no surprise: after all the past 5 years of this website have been, more than anything, a testament to the systematic theft, plunder and pillage of the global middle class by a small cabal of global financial oligarchs - those who have implicit control of the printing presses, who have the legal and legislative support of a few, actually make that all, corrupt and purchased politicians, who have merely made this wealth transfer from the poor, not so poor and modestly wealthy to the wealthiest, possible.

And not only possible, but the most rapid it has ever been in history.

The chart below from OxFam summarizes the unprecedented speed of wealth transfer going to the richest 1% courtesy of Bernanke et al's theft-enabling, and Congress-approved policies.

Some of the findings by Oxfam:

Given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend. For instance:

• The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.
• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.
• The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
• Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.
• The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.
• In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.

(Click link below to read more)
READ MORE Sphere: Related Content