The Underhill Journal

This was an interesting article I read in the Guardian, focusing on whether or not the Super Rich, like J.K. Rowling and on up, are really earning way too much money.

Our economic alchemy

JK Rowling's billion-dollar success is certainly awe inspiring, but has she earned too much money?
Khaled Diab

With 325m copies of the Harry Potter books already sold before the release of the latest (which sold 11m copies in the first 24 hours of publication) and the movies coming in as the third-highest grossing film series ever, it can only have been through some mysterious protective spell that I have remained immune to the magic of the young sorcerer.

I must admit that I'm generally not interested in children's literature and having grown up on a diet of JRR Tolkien, from The Hobbit right through to The Silmarillion, I suspected I would only be disappointed by the quality of Potter's imaginary world when compared with the wonders of Middle Earth.

Although I'm not interested in Harry, I have grown somewhat fascinated in JK Rowling and her own philosopher's stone. It is not the elixir of life referred to in her book, but that other magic property medieval alchemists attributed to this substance: its ability to turn lead and other base metals into gold.

The paragraph in this article I thought was most interesting was this one though.....

Together, the world's 946 billionaires are worth a staggering $3.5 trillion - which sits between the annual GDP of Japan and Germany - with converted philanthropist Bill Gates still top of the heap with $56bn. Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú saw his net worth skyrocket by a dizzying $19bn this year (equivalent to the GDP of Yemen). Over the last 12 months, he earned as much as over 26.5 million people - of the estimated 3 billion - people subsisting on $2 a day or less.

Bear in mind that Japan and Germany are both extremely successful economies and think about their populations. These figures (although I am generally not a big fan of the trustworthiness of statistics) represent a gross inequality that is beyond any rational justification. Simply put, nobody needs to be that rich!
What on earth can you do with that kind of money? What is the point in accumulating so much of it? What kind of rainy day are these people saving for?
Each and every one of us only have one life to live. Each and every one of us is only as good as our actions towards our fellow men. Those who sit amongst such vast wealth while other fellow human beings starve and and live lives of unnecessary suffering and do no more than donate titbits of their fortunes to salve their consciousnesses and cut their tax bills show by their actions that they are self-interested human beings. Their huge piles of cash do not stave off the fact that their lives must come to an end at some point, just like the life of any other human being. What use is their money to them then? What is the point of such acquisitiveness once they are no longer alive?
It seems to me to be a kind of madness to continue to accumulate wealth beyond your needs. A malicious kind of madness that takes from others, because these fortunes are built on the exploitation of others. The West feeds itself on the resources of the Developing World, and gives nothing but debts back, the Billionaires feed off of the financial resources of the West and give nothing back except scraps, in the mean time the Planet that we all have to share gets sucked dry and choked on our fumes and waste. Any fool can see that while the Status Quo remains, it's all going to end rather messily.
I don't particularly feel like I'm making much sense, but I guess you can all gather that I am not to fond of Greed and rampant capitalism. Feel free to pick apart my arguments as you see fit!