LONDON (SatireWire.com) — A new report claiming the 85 richest people on Earth have the same wealth as the entire bottom half of the world’s population has caused outrage among the top 85, who insist the measurement is misleading because their stuff is much nicer.
“You simply can’t compare what we have with what they have and say it’s the same,” argued Australian mining heiress Georgina Rinehart (net worth $17 billion). “I mean, if you’re saying 1,000 of their little shacks are worth the same as my vacation home on Majorca, I want to know who did the appraisals.”
“Exactly. It’s about quality, not quantity,” added Russian steel magnate Alisher Usmanov ($17.6 billion). “If what we have is really equal to what they have, then we could happily trade places with them. But we don’t. And we’re not going to.”
“But if we did the first thing we’d do is hire a decorator,” said Rinehart.
The study on wealth inequality, by British humanitarian group Oxfam, concluded that the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet have about $1.7 trillion in assets – the same amount owned by the richest 85 individuals. Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima called it “staggering” that half the world’s population own no more than a “tiny elite who could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus.”
In response, U.S. business mogul Charles Koch ($34 billion) said he was staggered as well.
“She thinks we would ride on a bus?” he said. “And ‘comfortably’? Please.”
Oxfam’s Byanyima, however, insisted the world’s wealthy have missed the point.
“They have to ride on buses, or take bicycles or walk, if they’re luck enough to own shoes,” she said. “They simply don’t have the money because the rich are taking it all.”
“Excuse me, but I thought you said they have the same as us — $1.7 trillion,” responded Indian petrochemical magnate Mukesh Ambani ($21.5 billion). “I certainly think you can buy shoes with that. Mine are only $2,000.”
Copyright © 2013, SatireWire.com
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