How many billionaires are there in the world?

http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2014/nov/02/how-many-billionaires-in-the-world

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Age: Immaterial

Appearance: Proliferating

Really? Because all I seem to hear about is people getting poorer and poorer. Not everyone. Only those who weren’t rich to start with.

That is almost everyone. Oh, tish and pish! Why don’t you look on the bright side for once?

Which is? That the number of billionaires in the world has doubled since the financial crisis – up from 793 in March 2009 to 1,645 in March this year!

How is that a good thing? Well, it has made 852 people really, really happy.

By sucking up money from millions of ordinary people lower down the economic scale and leaving their personal finances devastated and their national economies ultimately fatally bereft of consumers? Do you work for Oxfam or something? They keep going on about how it’s a bad thing that the massed wealth of the 85 richest people in the world are equal to that of the poorest half of the global population and that the former are growing at the rate of half a million dollars every minute, and saying that it is obscene that it will take the world’s richest man 220 years to spend all his money while. You should hear what they want to do about it!

What do they want to do about it? They want the government to impose a 1.5% tax on wealth over $1bn to raise $74bn a year to pay for access to education for every child and health services throughout the world’s poorest countries. It’s preposterous!

Why? Because!

Because what? Oh, so many reasons I hardly know where to start.

Pick one. Most billionaires will find a way to avoid it.

Oh, that’s persuasive. OK, no, wait, how about … it’s their hard-earned money! No extra fair taxes!

a) If you’ve got enough for three lifetimes, you’re never going to miss 1.5% off after the first billion and b) a 2012 analysis of US billionaires found that 40% of them had inherited rather than made the bulk of their wealth. I can’t stand around all day talking to communists. Goodbye.

Do say: “1.5% you say? Of course! Gladly I give it, for the greater good of humanity.”

Don’t say: “Piss off, pleb.”