We have so many houses going unused. We have food and resources for everybody, but we’ve set up a system that arbitrarily concentrates most of it on a few people! Young children, with no understanding why society is this way, are suffering and dying because they live in a world that collectively agrees to let this happen unnecessarily
Fuck, I’m stoned but you know I’m right
Edit: and the sad thought hits me: the first step is realizing the system doesn’t have to be this way, the second step is realizing it isn’t going to change, at least not any time soon
A quick look at the Wikipedia article The world’s billionaires will reveal that billionaires have an estimated aggregate net worth of 16 trillion. That’s more than 2,000 dollars for every single human being on this planet. Maybe not as individuals, but as a collective, they literally have the possibility of ending world hunger. And that’s only the richest three thousand or so.
If the world taxed them all only half their wealth (keeping them billionaires) and took the results and invested it in a trust, it could be generating 80 billion a year from only a 1% return. That’s enough to solve world hunger every year twice.
The world doesn’t have a resource problem. It has a billionaire problem.
I recommend a good read: Poverty, by America - Matthew Desmond – Princeton (2023)
~~We imagine that their sufferings are one thing and our life another. – Leo Tolstoy
The passage of Proposition 13 inspired a nationwide revolt that led to Reagan’s 1981 cutting spree. It was a white-led revolt. Only 2 groups opposed Proposition 13: public sector employees and African Americans. Massive tax cuts fundamentally reshaped the agendas of the nation’s 2 major political parties and resulted in the rise of private fortunes alongside public poverty. This was a response to white people being ordered to share public goods with Black people. ~~
How to fix?
In the USA:
We just have to stop spending so much on the rich. Support policies that disrupt poverty, not accommodate it. In 2020, the gap separately everyone in America below the poverty line and the poverty line itself amounted to $177 billion. That’s less that 1% of our GDP.
I’m calling for the rich to pay their taxes. Rebalance our social net. Return to a time when America made bigger investments in the general welfare.
“We need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and coopted that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.” - theologian Walter Bruggemann
Make sure all women have access to the best contraception and healthcare, and more pregnancies become intentional and safer. Provide new mothers with paid parental leave and free childcare. A country as wealthy as ours could put our money where our mouth is and support life. But from the poor, we just seem to take and take.~~
Let’s choose businesses that are doing right by their workers and the planet.
Doing the right thing is often highly inconvenient, time-consuming, even costly. That’s the price for our restored humanity.
Prosperity without poverty carries a different feeling. We’d be more free. A nation invested in ending poverty is a nation that is truly committed to freedom.
The worst part is: the wealthiest few of them could each, individually, if they wanted to, end world hunger permanently with their current wealth. Estimates I’ve read range $40b per year or something like $250-300b just once to set up sustainable long-term solutions globally.
Musk, Zuckerberg, or Bezos could end hunger globally and permanently. Any one of them, individually, could do it. If the richest 10 billionaires all pitched in a portion, they’d all recoup everything they spent within a couple years at worst. If the richest 100 did, many of them wouldn’t even notice the expenditure.
But it would only take 1 of them.
Not my line- but you can have billionaires or you can have democracy.