Do you know how many people own 82 percent of total wealth in 2017?

My personal belief is this. There is no way any TRADITIONAL working professional can be richer than a successful entrepreneur or a business owner. These successful entrepreneurs would grow their company and they then become billionaires. Of course startups are an awesome vehicle these days. Some keep making losses but new investors kept coming in. So, the founders get richer and richer….  What about the working population? Working population means the typical 9am – 5 pm kind of working people, doing the same thing, day in and day out and perhaps just changing the way they do their work when the supporting systems are changed. Else, everything remains the same. Yet, many of us wonder why is our salary not growing fast enough? 
Investment is thus needed, long term investment and not something bought today and goes up many times within a few months. That would be more like ‘taking a chance.’ Come on, property prices grew continuously when we plot it over a period of 10, 20 or even 30 years… Take a look at the image for the average property price increase for the past 17 years. On average it grows over 6 percent but if I am allowed to comment, I think 6.5 percent is too high. Perhaps a 4-5 percent is a more comfortable level and if possible, the new influx if affordable homes into the market should help to contain this overall increase even further. We shall see. As many of us know, the property prices for many of these heavily subsidised homes could not be sold for 10 years. Plus, the slowdown in the property market has also affected the selling prices too. Good for the market. Cool it down…..  Coming back to the business owners, the successful ones are REALLY getting super-duper extraordinary richer than ever.
In fact 1 percent of the people in the globe actually got 82 percent of the wealth of the world last year. Here’s that full article in BBC News.  The report comes from Oxfam. The reasons the super wealthy are getting every wealthier? They include tax evasion, firms’ influence on policy, erosion of workers’ rights, and cost cutting for the widening gap. It says that the trend of “widening inequality” remained. The charity is urging a rethink of business models, arguing their focus on maximising shareholder returns over broader social impact is wrong.
Of course, the report from Oxfam is not a conclusive one. For example, Mark Littlewood, director general at free market think tank The Institute of Economic Affairs, said Oxfam was becoming “obsessed with the rich rather than the poor”.  (Frankly, he has a point there. Remember the fact that many of these billionaires were actually working people like the majority of us? Well, they had a great idea, took a huge risk and even potential bankruptcies in order to be successful. Even President Trump did not become a billionaire in his first try..)   He added, “Higher taxes and redistribution will do nothing to help the poor; wealth is not a fixed pie. Richer people are also highly taxed people – reducing their wealth won’t lead to redistribution, it will destroy it to the benefit of no one.” Here’s that full article in BBC again. 
It is clear. The richest few would always be growing their wealth faster than the majority of anyone in this place we call Earth. Out of these successful people, there were many who failed too but that’s not the main thing we should think about. I think the question most of us working people should ask ourselves is this. Did I do even better in 2017 versus 2016? Am I a valuable employee? Am I investing some parts of my small salary into something which can bring me bigger returns? By the way, it does not need to be into property yeah. It can be into seminars / courses / workshops that provides us with more resources to better our lives, financially. Happy working on it.
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written on 23 Jan 2018
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