Practically speaking there are two courses of action to follow in attempting to get these 100 individuals’ money applied to this problem.

1) Taking it from the 100; or
2) Convincing the 100 to donate the money to this cause;

The first method requires lobbying every single government on earth to pass legislation to either tax this money or outright seize it. If you don’t convince every government to do this, then the 100 will simply move themselves and their money to the non-taxing/seizing jurisdiction. Of course, the 100 people will react and organize their affairs to avoid this taxation or seizure.

If this herculean task is accomplished and the monies are collected, then you need to pool this money and use it efficiently and effectively to deal with this problem. Governments have had, from other sources more than this amount of money every year of their existence but have failed to eliminate poverty. What makes you think that just because the money comes from a new source (i.e. the fabled 100), that they will suddenly be able to eliminate poverty.

The second method of using the money from the 100 to alleviate poverty is to convince them to do it themselves. It is a much more manageable task to convince 100 people of the motherhood of this issue than to convince every government on earth (which involves convincing the voters who elect those governments) to tax or seize. Also with the power of strategic philanthropy, the effective and efficient use of this money to tackle the problem will more likely result in some real progress being made.

If you follow my logic but still feel that the 100’s money should be taxed or seized, then I think you need to ask yourself if you are really interested in eliminating poverty or are you just envious of wealth.

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

Who did all the work to generate this extra $240,000,000,000?

Or perhaps the question is – whose work will be stolen to give value to this notional sum? Whose welfare states, health services, education systems cut down like so many ripe crops?

This is a new form of slavery. Make no mistake.

Thank you for perhaps the most intelligent comment I have yet read on a commentary section. As an individual who never posts on these things (precisely for the reasons to which you are alluding), I am thankful to see that someone shares my disillusionment at the cynical farce which ‘educated’ opinion in the field of development has made of itself. Cheers.

Literal Interpreter Says:
I would be interested to see the data this campaign is based upon. To my knowledge there is little empirical evidence to suggest that dreams are any basis for developing policy on voters’ rights, equitable seating arrangements on public transport or equal access to the judicial system. Though it may be a catchy headline phrase it is unscrupulously and dangerously misleading as it implies that the way to tackle gross levels of racial discrimination is via some fanciful narcoleptic strategy.

Instead of sleep walking into sound bite populism it would be much more honest and accurate, and avoid the typical self-aggrandisement, to state that: “I have consulted widely with numerous stake holders and we have agreed through a participatory processes to propose a modest and fully costed evidence based randomized controlled trial with appropriate monitoring, evaluation and learning elements factored in, that will study a suitably isolated element of this complex problem to establish what further research is needed.”

This is one of those arresting figures that illustrates the stark inequality in the world. That is useful, and good for making headlines, but it seems to have been stretched too far.

Increase in billionaires’ net worth on paper (i.e. the value that their stock portfolio etc.. has risen as calculated by the Bloomberg Index) does not equate to ‘net income’, (as the Oxfam Blog puts it).

And the amount that would need to be distributed to bring everyone up to $1.25 for one year does not equate to “ending global poverty”.

Does it matter, if it highlights that a few people have tonnes of money and a lot of people have very little money, and it gets the issue into the papers?

I think yes. It contributes to the prevailing impression that when it comes to talking about poor people (and numbers?) being accurate doesn’t really matter if you get to make a point.

And it undermines messages about governance, investment, capacity building, fragile states etc.. by claiming that ending global poverty is easy and ‘just takes’ $66bn.

Thank you for this.

Out of interest, is there a statistic that tells us the cost of supporting community development initiatives [which will potentially raise income levels for people in poverty] vs the profits of the most lucrative/powerful individuals and companies?

To me, as a novice community development worker, a stat about raising income levels [unless you're referring to global trade and (fair) prices paid for goods] is somehow devoid of meaning without reference to the costs of supporting individuals/groups to sustain their livelihoods in the future.

Just my thoughts, I appreciate this a HUGE area! Thanks for any insight you can offer.