(no subject)

[valarltd]

You are in the top 0.821% richest people in the world.
There are 5,950,709,435 people poorer than you.
How do you feel about that?\

Considering we work four jobs between the 2 of us to make that $63K, I feel no guilt.

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I think you're missing the point... ;-)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Probably. I'm notorious for my complacency,

See, I feel like I've worked hard to get where I am. Granted, i may be making 10-100 times as much as someone in a third-world country, but my cost of living is 100-200 times what theirs is.

If i could go out, cut the wood to build my hut, farm a chunk of land and get my water from the river, and had no electricity or phone, sure, i could live on a few hundred a year.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No, that's not the point.

The point is something like this:

If you, your husband, and your older children were employed on a banana plantation (http://www.web.net/fairfruit/banrealcost.html) in South America, you would be lucky to earn a dollar a day between the two of you. You'd still be working at 4 jobs, though, and your children could look forward to a lifetime of hard work for little recompense. (Of course, life would be different if you lived on St Lucia (http://www.guardian.co.uk/banana/Story/0,2763,206259,00.html). But the US has done its best to change that.)

The point is, you're privileged. Incredibly privileged. And not because you've worked for it: because the US has made millions of people worldwide poorer in order to make American citizens richer. The point of this software tool is to show that the poorest people in a privileged country are still in the upper 15% of world incomes - not because we worked for it, but because our ancestors exploited their ancestors, and because our governments are still exploiting them now.

Feeling smug about a privilege gained by birthright and not by any personal effort is, well - missing the point.