Sunday 30 September 2012

More people are rich than poor

Reading this fascinating essay by John Quiggin on Keynes and 'achievable utopia', I was pulled up short by the following sentence.  After noting that 'A billion or so people live in destitution, and billions more are poor by any reasonable standard' he goes on to suggest that this is the first time in history when human productive capacity means that nobody need be poor. Then this bombshell:
In fact, more people are rich, by any reasonable historical standard, than are poor.
If this goes on, 'the poor' will become a minority; a sort of elite.

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