The richest 26 in the world get richer by £2bn a day. Metro, 21st January 2108

I read about this in the metro newspaper yesterday. I Don't always get to read the newspaper, or choose to for that matter,  but the Metro is a freebie on the underground so you get them on the train.
 I flicked through and and stopped on page 22 to read the headline above.
It isn't even a front page headline.
Its no big deal.
That is the way of things.
Who cares about this fact? 
Not the freezing homeless, rough-living on the streets; Not the lady who has just worked two shifts to pay the rent; Not the man with flu who still gets up to go to his job because he needs the pay; Not the estate agents/landlords who demand massive rents and deposits to tie up business rentals and home rentals excluding millions out of renting decent accommodation and kicking down the dreams of small business enterprises;
Who cares?
The family at the food bank? The people in their churches? Those who get the 6.00 am bus to get to a job that doesn't pay them enough for the 10 hour day? The tricksters? The bankers? All of the people, all of us forming lines to keep this disparity going...Who are we that do not know we are keeping this old system going?

We Are all just keeping on with the programme , colluding by not having a choice..we are all held in the net, we are ...
..the kids at school. The teens with dreams. The adults who lost theirs. The parents hoping for a better future. The grandparents. The widows. The dying. The street workers. The drunks. The old. The lonely. The lost. The slave workers. The trafficked. The unemployed. The employed. The nurses. The doctors. The policemen. The politicians....The piles of people that live in the underbelly of the city...
...all of us..."caught in the net of 'Who Cares?" This is the net which keeps on 'keeping this old system  going' ...
and that is just because it 'That is the way of things'.

Disparity of wealth is the evil economy, where the 'materialising influence*'  has wreaked its havoc with only 26 people laughing.

The question is... How do we fix 'this fix'? 
Michaela.
* Scroll down to the end for the *


https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest-1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year

Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year - poorest half of humanity got nothing

Published: 

22 January 2018

Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today.  The report is being launched as political and business elites gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’ reveals how the global economy enables a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes while hundreds of millions of people are struggling to survive on poverty pay. 

• Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2 percent. The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017.
• It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year.
• It would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top 5 companies in the garment sector in 2016.

Oxfam’s report outlines the key factors driving up rewards for shareholders and corporate bosses at the expense of workers’ pay and conditions. These include the erosion of workers’ rights; the excessive influence of big business over government policy-making; and the relentless corporate drive to minimize costs in order to maximize returns to shareholders.

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International said: “The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.”

Women workers often find themselves off at the bottom of the heap. Across the world, women consistently earn less than men and are usually in the lowest paid and least secure forms of work. By comparison, 9 out of 10 billionaires are men.

“Oxfam has spoken to women across the world whose lives are blighted by inequality. Women in Vietnamese garment factories who work far from home for poverty pay and don’t get to see their children for months at a time. Women working in the US poultry industry who are forced to wear nappies because they are denied toilet breaks,” said Byanyima.

Oxfam is calling for governments to ensure our economies work for everyone and not just the fortunate few:

• Limit returns to shareholders and top executives, and ensure all workers receive a minimum ‘living’ wage that would enable them to have a decent quality of life. For example, in Nigeria, the legal minimum wage would need to be tripled to ensure decent living standards.
• Eliminate the gender pay gap and protect the rights of women workers. At current rates of change, it will take 217 years to close the gap in pay and employment opportunities between women and men.
• Ensure the wealthy pay their fair share of tax through higher taxes and a crackdown on tax avoidance, and increase spending on public services such as healthcare and education. Oxfam estimates a global tax of 1.5 percent on billionaires’ wealth could pay for every child to go to school.

Results of a new global survey commissioned by Oxfam demonstrates a groundswell of support for action on inequality. Of the 70,000 people surveyed in 10 countries, nearly two-thirds of all respondents think the gap between the rich and the poor needs to be urgently addressed.

“It’s hard to find a political or business leader who doesn’t say they are worried about inequality. It’s even harder to find one who is doing something about it.  Many are actively making things worse by slashing taxes and scrapping labor rights,” said Byanyima.

“People are ready for change. They want to see workers paid a living wage; they want corporations and the super-rich to pay more tax; they want women workers to enjoy the same rights as men; they want a limit on the power and the wealth which sits in the hands of so few. They want action.”

Notes to editors

Download ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’ and a methodology document that outlines how Oxfam arrived at the key statistics in the report.

Broadcast quality footage and photographs are available here featuring Lan, who works in a garment factory in Vietnam, supplying many global fashion brands. Long hours and poverty pay mean Lan has not been able to get home to see her son for 9 months.  

New data from Credit Suisse reveals that 42 people now own the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity. This figure cannot be compared to figures from previous years - including the 2016/17 statistic that eight men owned the same wealth as half the world - because it is based on an updated and expanded data set published by Credit Suisse in November 2017.  When Oxfam recalculated last year’s figures using the latest data we found that 61 people owned the same wealth as half the world in 2016 – and not eight.

Oxfam’s calculations are based on global wealth distribution data provided by the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data book published in November 2017.  The wealth of billionaires was calculated using Forbes' billionaires list last published in March 2017.

RIWI and YouGov conducted the online survey for Oxfam in ten countries: India, Nigeria, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Morocco, Netherlands and Denmark. For details on the methodology and the full results see here. 

For the *  "incarnation into biological form was intended from the beginning." It is not an aberration that beings issued from the Primal Field of Consciousness were to descend into material form to implement some long term Goal of the Star Maker. We were not originally supposed to lose our sense of Oneness with the Eternal Source but, as already indicated, we were deceived into believing fearful thoughts of separation and isolation by entities under the spell of the forces of materialization. * "The materializing influence"*, as Ken Carey describes it, " is the principle of contraction that holds energy efficiently bound in matter." Personified in the Western culture as Satan, "these universal systemic beings are the Creator's mean of keeping material structure in assigned patterns of form and behavior. They are the caretakers of Creation's landscape, the rulers of subconscious processes and events."