Perspective on Wealth

Chris Marlow —  December 5, 2006 — 2 Comments

Steven, my friend who is serving God in S. Africa, just blogged some ASTONISHING information about wealth and poverty: Perspective on Wealth.

Simply sad and amazing. Below are some quick numbers from Steven’s post:

# The top 2% own 50% of global household wealth
# The bottom 50% own just 1% of global wealth
# Assets of $2,200 place one in the top half of global wealth owners
# The top 10% of the global wealthy own assets worth at least $61,000
# 25% of the top 10% ($61,000 – remember?) live in the USA. 20% of top 10% live in Japan. The rest of the top ten percent – 8% in Germany, 6% in the UK, and 4% each in Spain and France. That’s 67% of the top 10% living in 6 countries.

Wow. Did you get that? The richest 2% own 50% of the world’s wealth and the bottom 50% own just 1% of the world’s wealth. Puts some things in perspective… Does the gospel have anything to say about this situation? Or not? And what is the answer? Massive global redistribution of wealth can’t be the solution. I guess it depends on whether you’re a neo-communist or not.

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I’m the Founder/CEO of Help One Now. I live in downtown Raleigh with my family. I’m a justice advocate, who loves empowering leaders (and tribes) to launch movements for doing good.

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In Church, Poverty, Shapers, Social Justice
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  • http://martydaniels.wordpress.com/ martydaniels

    Great post!

    In MHO the best thing for those of us in the top 50% to do is to not feel guilty about what we have but to also not feel entitled to it. We have what we have largely because of opportunities that have been afforded to us on the back of someone else.

    So, give more. Understand WE don’t NEED so much.

    Compelling stuff that I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks.

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