Really Good News For Really Rich Folks

The one percent haven’t had it this good since the ancient roman days when they’d get to flog women and children in the streets for looking at them sideways, seizing men and forcing them to battle to the death in gladiator pits, to “please the mob.”

These days the elite cruise around in their boats, or drink cherry soda pops while bailing out Goldman Sachs from their fucking bath tubs.

Oxfam also calculated that 62 individuals had the same wealth as 3.5 billion people, the bottom half of the global population, compared with 388 individuals five years earlier. The wealth of the most affluent rose 44 percent since 2010 to $1.76 trillion, while the wealth of the bottom half fell 41 percent or just over $1 trillion.

The charity used the statistics to argue that growing inequality poses a threat to economic expansion and social cohesion. Those risks have already been noted in countries from the U.S. to Spain, where voters are increasingly backing populist political candidates, while it’s sown tensions on the streets of Latin America and the Middle East.

“It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus,” said Winnie Byanima, executive director of Oxfam International. “World leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action.”

The alarming part of this dichotomy is that it always ends badly for the 62 guys with all of the boats and cherry sodas.