Distribution of the good things of life

I was shocked to read in yesterday's Guardian that the 25 richest people in the world own as much as the poorest half put together.

If we allow the richest people £50 billion each and the poorest half to amount to 3.25 billion people, that says that the poor people have, on average, something less than £400 each. Which I find entirely plausible.

What I do find surprising is that the world is still going round. How long will it be before all the poor people decide they want a bigger share of the cake? How much strutting and preening at Davos do they have to watch on Facebook before they reach for their pitchforks and machetes?

I am also reminded of an observation by Shaxson in the book noticed at references 1 and 2, to the effect that seriously rich people have got everything and done everything. All that seems to be left for them is getting still richer, with that getting preferably being spiced up by doing it at someone else's expense. With Mr Gates and his wife being honourable exceptions. And with my own more considered thoughts working their way through the press.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/11/city-boys-episode-1.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/11/city-boys.html.

Reference 3: https://wealthygorilla.com/top-20-richest-people-world/. My source for the £50 billion figure. Not sure how respectable they are given: '... About us: Wealthy Gorilla was founded in 2014 by Dan Western, as a website to help motivate and inspire others to improve their own lives, and live life on their own terms. Isn’t that what we all want to achieve? Since then, Wealthy Gorilla has grown over the years, and become one of the leading self-improvement blogs on the web. We’re currently receiving over 2 million views every single month, and have over 200K social media followers, and 200+ authors have been able to share their content on our platform...'.