According to the World Bank, 'extreme poverty' means living on less than $2.15 (about R37) a day.
I love me a bit of mega wealthy money maths. As of last week, the richest person in the world, our own Elon Musk, is due a $1 trillion payday in a decade’s time. That’s 1 000 billion, or a million million; that’s twelve zeros. All this, on top of the $470 billion he currently has.
Come that happy day, the richest man in the world will be richer than Switzerland, richer than Sweden, richer than Saudi Arabia and richer than Nigeria, Qatar and Malaysia combined. He’s already richer than South Africa. He’s not the only one.
According to Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who is quoting an Oxfam report, the net worth of the 10 richest people in the US has increased by $698 billion in the last year.
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Please note the phrasing: has grown by, not grown to – this is not how rich they are, but how much richer they have become.
With this one-year increase alone, they could buy Ferraris, Mercedes, BMWs, Volkswagens, Fords, and Toyotas and still have over $100 billion left. At a dollar a second, it would take 31 years to count just one billion of it. (These figures are astronomical, so excuse me if I drop a billion dollars. What’s a decimal point between friends?)
Alternatively, they could buy 700 million people out of dire poverty for the next decade, because this increase in wealth is, as Monbiot points out, “almost 10 times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide”.
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According to the World Bank, “extreme poverty” means living on less than $2.15 (about R37) a day. Fully 67% of those afflicted live in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that contains 16% of the global population and where income inequality is also at its most extreme.
Yes, they could end it, but they won’t. And, of course, Musk’s trillion-dollar payday may never happen either. Nonetheless, if he cashed up right now, he could give absolutely everyone in the world $50 and still pocket $60 billion in change. That’s 60 000 million. That’s 10 zeros. The big zero.
But let us not judge. After all, Musk is only ever thinking of humanity. In response to criticism back in 2021, he clarified he was doing it for all of us, saying on then-Twitter: “I am accumulating resources to help make life multiplanetary & extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Hungry? Well, chew on that.
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