Crucify the wealthy?

LAST month nonprofit organization Oxfam International released a report titled “Working for a Few,” which said the world’s 85 richest people have as much as the poorest 3.5 billion. According to a summary of the report, “the wealth of the top 1 percent of the world’s richest people amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.” The media lapped up the report, quoting Oxfam as saying that “rigged rules mean economic growth for rich elites all over world.”

Oxfam, founded by a group of Quakers in England in 1942, was first known as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. Now it is considered as a “social activist” organization.

You would think that Oxfam was talking only about dictators like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, global arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi (once one of the world’s richest), or maybe a crooked (Filipino) customs official no one has ever heard of. But Oxfam’s list of the world’s 10 wealthiest people features those who own and run legitimate, tax-paying businesses. Most of them started their businesses from the ground up and are rich only because of the value of the businesses they own, not because they have been stealing from the poor.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is on the list because of the company that he created in 1975, which changed the world for the rest of us; Microsoft directly employs over 100,000 people. So is Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle Corp., which has 125,000 employees. Also on the list are Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera, who founded the Spanish clothing company Zara in 1974. Zara now has 1,800 stores worldwide.

Some of these companies have been around for many decades. Another member of the elite group who apparently took advantage of the “rigged rules” is Lilian Bettencourt. She is the 91-year-old daughter of the founder of the personal-care company L’Oreal, which was founded in 1909 and employs over 90,000.

Frenchman Bernard Arnault convinced his father to sell their family’s construction company in 1976 and used the money to buy a number of luxury-goods companies, including Louis Vuitton (founded in 1854) and Moët & Chandon champagne (formed in 1743). Arnault’s group employs 90,000.

While it could be true that “behind every great fortune, there is a great crime,” as French novelist Honoré de Balzac once said, what Oxfam might better concentrate on is income disparity. But then again, maybe you cannot make sensational headlines with these facts:

Did you know that you might very easily be in the top 1 percent of all 7 billion people on earth in terms of income? According to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic, you are in the global top 1 percent if your annual income (converted to pesos at 45 to $1) is P1.53 million. Even P225,000 makes you a member of the top 20 percent and P540,000 puts you in the top 10 percent. Incredibly, an annual income of P3.15 million a year puts you in the top 0.01 percent of all global income earners. We wonder how much Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima earns each year.

Wealth is not a single pizza with limited slices, where if you take too many, someone else does not eat. Wealth creation is milling flour, growing tomatoes, building pizza ovens and baking more and more pizzas so that everyone has plenty to eat. Wealth is not created by stealing from your local pizza chain.

source:  Businessworld