1% own 40% - a great recipe for disaster

So, if you were on a separate planet recently you won't have have heard that a staggering (and I mean that in a non-hyperbolic kind of way) 40% of the world's wealth is owned by a snivelling 1%. What does this mean? Well first of all that the disgusting inequality in this world is simply not a state of affairs that can do much good.

The rich get enormously rich, then they behave like pigs to enable them to get richer still. And yet, as we all should know by now, that when you're that rich, being a bit richer means shit. You don't even notice it. It has no consequences. Therefore, putting this together one could say that taxing the rich far more than we do now would save the rich from their own vile impulses - that of doing everything in their power to gain riches and power to satisfy cravings which will never be satisfied.

Take one of the super rich: Bill Gates - Microsoft's policy has always been an attempt to stampede over all others, creating software that would be run on every computer in the world. And what happened? Bill Gates set up a foundation to give pretty much all that money away. Now apart from the egoism of playing god here, there doesn't seem much point to it all. My question would be, why didn't you charge less for your software? Why don't you settle for less market share? Better quality control? The only objective was to crap over everyone else, and the end result is he's just dying to give it all away, which you have to agree is the good part.

The enormously rich serve no one. They have their billions locked up in banks forever. The money serves no purpose, it is never spent, it does nothing but allow banks to make huge profits. It doesn't get shared around, and in most cases it certainly does not get distributed to the poor.

What do lottery winners do with their millions when they win? Most buy huge houses, helicopters and Ferraris, then they go all out to show the world how great they think they are. Result: pointless greed, pointless purchases of nonsense goods, for only a complete tit would drive a Ferrari in the first place. Answer: make a 1 million pound limit on lottery winnings - share it out among more people who then will perhaps choose to spend more wisely. No one needs a helicopter to go to work.

So, there really needs to be a situation where the hyper rich need to, if not be throttled, but be reminded of their earthly duties to others, the ones who essentially have created their wealth for them. Time to balance things up a bit.