As the world gets more developed every day, the gap between the richest of the world and the poorest of the world keeps getting bigger. It is astonishing to think that world’s richest 85 people in the world control as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people of the world. This astounding fact means that only a select few individuals own as much wealth as the other half of the world. This inequality threatens to divide our society and cause more chaos in the future as poverty breeds corruption and destruction. The majority of the poor people in the world live in the continent of Africa, where a major portion of the population earn less than $2 a day, far below the poverty line and not enough to survive properly. We need to fix this pathetic situation before further chaos erupts. If we don’t act fast and rectify the problem of inequality, our societies would crumble and mass riots would engulf this planet.
Our economic model needs to change as there are serious problems with our economic policies which have resulted in this situation. Every day more and more people are pushed under the poverty line while the rich keeps getting richer. Our capitalist society is focused on churning out big profits for a handful of executives who are in charge of the company, while majority of the workers don’t even get paid a decent salary. The cost of living is rising every year across the world but our wages remain stagnant, and this has posed challenges for low income and middle class families to struggle and keep up with the rising inflation. As our monetary supply keeps shrinking and the fiat currency we hold keeps losing value every year, our governments are more focused on helping the rich make even more money at the expense of the general population. If the policy makers in our government were actually fair and cared about the general population, then the world would not have seen such a dire situation today.
Countries like India and China have massive amounts of poor people inside their borders which pose a risk to the well-being of these nations. The widening gap between the rich and poor needs to be fixed by creating better employment opportunities for the poor. Education is the biggest driver of growth and the single biggest factor behind pushing people out of poverty. If we start providing access to quality education to our poor people and give them access to jobs and good healthcare services, the problem of inequality can be solved in just a few decades. Governments need to be more proactive in investing in programs that give employment opportunities to the poor and train them to have necessary skills for the marketplace. Our policy makers need to realize the gravity of our current situation and stop working for the rich. Once they start doing their jobs properly, and stamp out corruption from the top levels of government, money will gradually be distributed in a fair proportion. We don’t need a socialist government, all we need are sound economic policies that favor the general population rather than the elites of our society. Taxes on the rich should be raised while the taxes on the middle and lower classes should be lowered in order for the wealth distribution to take place in a fair manner. This gap between the rich and poor will only widen in the future if we don’t act fast. Our countries need to proactively solve this problem before this situation gets out of hand.
