When Tyee and I were writing The Clean Money Revolution the facts we cite in the first chapter were current as of January 2015 :
“From 2002 to 2010, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased at the same rate as that of the poorest 50% of the population. In only five years between 2009 and 2014, the wealth of the bottom half of the global population declined – while that of the world’s billionaires doubled. Forty-eight percent of global wealth was in the hands of one percent of the population in 2014. Just 80 billionaires control the same wealth as 3.5 billion people: half the planet’s population.”
Fast forward to January 2017 and that already shocking number of 80 has dropped to only 8 billionaires who now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people.
This Oxfam image from a 2016 article puts that dropping number into visual perspective:
Now, more than ever, my call for us to be billionaires of good deeds, billionaires of love, billionaires of meaning and purpose, is important.
The clean money revolution is about a strong peace, where a fair, regenerative economy thrives. It’s not about a handful of men balanced on one side of a teeter totter while billions of people balance them out on the other side.
It’s time to shift trillions of dollars from damaging use to regeneration.