“For seven years, I lived on $500 a month. The cost of taxes on my small home was more than $200 monthly. […] I feel rich when I have food.” This is the sad but true reality for Sharon Dory, and billions of others have it even worse. Nearly half the population has to live on much less, not even making 100 dollars a month. Why do people have to live like this when there is enough food on the planet to feed everyone? When we have enough money to end extreme poverty? The answer is the distribution of wealth. The top 1% of people own more wealth than the rest of the 99% combined. They donate little to none of their fortunes, sitting on their thrones of greed and watching as poor peasants shamble past.

The rich, specifically billionaires, are greedy. They have so much power they could use to change the world for the better, yet they seldom try.

And if you don’t believe it’s that bad, here’s a video about previous basketball player Samuel Dalembert describing his life when he was younger, in poverty: 

In a Billion

Billion vs Million

A million dollars and a billion dollars are both a lot of money. They are usually compared to each other. Being a millionaire or a billionaire are both seen as impressive feats. However, we tend to group these giant numbers together because they sound similar. To make it easier to comprehend the gigantic difference, Dorothy C. Morrell compared them using seconds. In the article, she calculated that a million seconds add up to about 12 days. A billion seconds, on the other hand, is equal to about 32 years. That is an absolutely colossal difference. It also makes billionaires’ amount of money seem unreasonable. But how much money does the average person need to survive their whole life?

How Long Would a Billion Last You?

The average American, according to the United States Census Bureau, makes somewhere around $58,000 a year. If an average American won one million dollars in the lottery, they could live over 17 years as they normally would.  With a billion dollars, the same average American would have enough to live normally for over 17 centuries–17,241 years to be exact. One would think with this much money, or 144.7  times this much money, Jeff Bezos would be able to treat his workers better.

The Dark Side of the World’s Richest People

Worker Treatment

Now, some may argue that billionaires really do need their money, considering most have a company to run. I counter that argument with the fact that many billionaires treat their workers very poorly. The richest man in the world– Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com–treats his workers like robots. Aimee Picchi wrote a CBS News article after interviewing James Bloodworth, who worked undercover in an Amazon warehouse in 2016. The workers were monitored with a “handheld device monitored workers’ time and movements, sending messages when they were behind or slowing down.” There was also had a disciplinary point system, getting six points would get the worker fired. Calling in sick, even if accompanied by a doctor’s note, would result in a point.

Similarly, the New York Times wrote an article about how Walmart “routinely refuses to accept doctors’ notes, penalizes workers who need to take care of a sick family member and otherwise punishes employees for lawful absences.” This accusation shouldn’t be taken lightly, over 1,000 workers have made corresponding claims. Jim Walton has gotten rich off of Walmart. He profits off of this poor worker treatment that forces employees to work more often.

Psychopathy

The Huffington Post found that 20-25% of prisoners are psychopaths. The Washington Post claims that 21% of CEOs are psychopaths. Most billionaires are CEOs of companies, and if you compare the percentages, it starts to become a bit alarming. With the nearly equal percentages, it’s likely that many billionaires have criminalistic tendencies.

But Rich People Donate to Charity All the Time!

A Forbes article boasts that “As a group, the Forbes 400 have pledged to give more to charity than the U.S. as a whole gives in a year.” Some of the world’s richest people actually do donate large amounts of their fortune to charity. As a matter of fact, 186 billionaires have joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half of their worth. This may seem like a lot, but when you consider that there are 2,208 billionaires worldwide, that small number is put into perspective.

What Could Billionaires Do?

End World Hunger or Extreme Poverty

According to the Borgen Project, it would only cost 30 billion dollars a year to end world hunger. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Billionaires could end world hunger for over 303 years[/perfectpullquote] That may sound like a lot, but if you combined the wealth of all the billionaires in the world, you would get 9.1 trillion dollars. That means billionaires could end world hunger for over 303 years. Their combined wealth also continuously increases, it increased by over a trillion since last year. The Borgen Project also claims that to end extreme poverty, it would cost 175 billion dollars per year for 20 years, which totals at 3.5 trillion dollars. That means billionaires could end extreme poverty twice and still have 600 billion dollars left over, which could have ended Flint’s water crisis with 200 billion dollars to spare (only 60 billion away from stopping climate change).

So Much More than Harris Rosen

Harris Rosen decided to take direct action for a cause that he cared deeply about: the education of his city’s youth. The University of Central Florida wrote an article about what he did after putting 10 million dollars to use: “In 1993, Harris Rosen ‘adopted’ a run-down, drug-infested section of Orlando called Tangelo Park. Rosen offers free preschool for all children prior to kindergarten and a free college education for high school graduates. Today, the high school graduation rate for Tangelo Park is 100 percent.” That was the effect 10 million dollars had on one part of Orlando.

Imagine what billions of dollars could do.

Featured image by geralt via Pixabay