Het Neoliberale Geloof 15

'Richest 2 Percent Own Half the World's Wealth.
by Aaron Glantz.

The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half the world's wealth, according to a new study released by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University.
The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total.
In contrast, the assets of half of the world's adult population account for barely 1 percent of global wealth.
"It reflects the extreme nature of inequality around the world," one of the study's authors, New York University Professor Edward Wolff, told OneWorld. "Yes, we are richer than Africa and Latin America and most of Asia, but how much richer is what hadn't really been established until our study came out," Wolff added.
According to the report, the average American's wealth amounted to $144,000 in the year 2000, more than 100 times higher than the average Indian or Indonesian, whose assets totaled $1,100 and $1,400, respectively.
The study defined wealth as physical and financial assets--like personal savings and home, land, and stock ownership--less debts.
Besides the United States, only Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Israel showed average personal wealth of more than $50,000.
Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, many former Soviet Republics, and most of sub-Saharan Africa showed average personal wealth of under $2,000.
Conflict-ridden countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Sudan did not report data.
"This is a reminder that most people do not live the way middle class Americans live," David Rauchman of the Washington, DC-based Center for Global Development told OneWorld. "That comes out of two centuries or more of history where North America and Europe have experienced steady and fairly rapid industrial development. Meanwhile, places like Asia and Africa haven't so much."
Rauchman said foreign aid programs and philanthropy would go part of the way toward closing the international wealth gap, but trade and immigration policies are also important.
"If we make it easier for clothing manufacturers and farmers in Bangladesh or Mali to ship their goods to the United States so Americans can buy them, that will help and it will be good for us too," he said. "Same thing for immigration. It's good for Mexico if Mexicans can come to the United States and send money home. If we make it easier for people to come and participate in our economy, it's actually good for economies in the rest of the world."
But unfettered free trade tends to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor, says Anuradha Mittal of the California-based Oakland Institute, a think tank that specializes in social, economic, and environmental issues. She says the rise of free trade has increased the wealth gap, both internationally and inside many countries.'

lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1222-04.htm Of:
http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/144081/1/

Waarbij nog aangetekend dat het begrip gemiddeld inkomen relatief weinig zegt, want als 1 procent van de Amerikanen 40 procent van de nationale rijkdommen bezit en ongeveer 40 miljoen van de Amerikanen onder de armoedegrens leeft zegt een gemiddeld inkomen niets over de werkelijke financiele situatie van vele Amerikanen. Hetzelfde geldt natuurlijk ook voor de rest van de wereld. Wel wordt duidelijk hoe absurd en onhoudbaar deze gigantische verschillen zijn. De armen en berooiden zullen in opstand komen tegen de rijken zoals dat de hele geschiedenis is gebeurd. De vraag is niet of er een opstand komt maar alleen wanneer.