The Art of Deception: The Rich v/s the Poor Debate – Written by Boringbug

Posted on December 10, 2017 by Jeyran Main

Boringbug is a blogger, a sketch artist by hobby and a lawyer. He writes to pen his vague ideas and experiences in different forms. His blog Boringbug is a part reflection of his ideas, experiences, dialogues, thoughts, and opinions. It can be reached here.

The Art of Deception: The Rich v/s the Poor debate

I read a report by Oxfam which said that the top eight richest people in the world owned approximately 50% of the word’s wealth. The report “An economy for the 99%” states that “New estimates show that just eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world. As growth benefits the richest, the rest of society – especially the poorest – suffers. The very design of our economies and the principles of our economics have taken us to this extreme, unsustainable and unjust point.”

I couldn’t help but wonder as to how could that be possible? Was it because of their hard work alone that they became this wealthy? Or was it because of their skills alone that they accumulated so much wealth?

The answer to this lies in the historical development of the nations. The accumulation of wealth started with the growth of mercantile capitalism in Europe and reached its epitome with the massive exploitation of laborers. The communist and socialist ideologies were the fights against such exploitation, and after that, these followers of these ideologies waged war against capitalism. This resulted in the nations take the ownership of the natural resources lying within their territories and further resulted in the efforts of redistribution.

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The USA countered communism was leading to a cold war between it and USSR. Despite that, many nations accepted communism as a mean of governance resulting in the rise of welfare states. This brought the philosophy of equality and equity into the picture, with the nations aiming for equal distribution of resources. With the collapse of USSR (1991) the myth of invincibility of communism got dissipated. This decline of communism re-energized capitalism further encouraging the accumulation of wealth. This further led to the extreme disproportionate distribution of wealth.

Excessive accumulation was initially termed as immoral, but in present times such accumulation is attributed to the skill and intelligence of the person accumulating it. Rightly so. This has led to the idealization of a wealthy person as a smart, intelligent person capable of making money.

In reality, including a scientific approach, it is not possible to accumulate such enormous wealth in a single lifetime. How can a small percentage (1%) of excessively rich people have such a working brain and then the other 99% have none at all? If intelligence is the source of which wealth is accumulated then clearly these people must be having a higher functioning brain (biology anyone). Clearly, this level of inequality cannot be described in scientific terms. The level of inequality can be judged from the fact that the rich do not have time to enjoy their prosperity whereas the poor have ample of time but no prosperity.

Though the wealth of these eight people has successfully convinced the society that this is a sheer result of hard work and proper planning, which indeed is not entirely true.