Our modern world has an incredible amount of wealth, but it also sadly has an incredible amount of poverty in which nearly half of our human population are extremely impoverished, in which their daily needs of food, clean water, sanitation, electricity, and shelter are severely diminished. Some sort of poverty exists in every country of our world, and poverty is especially prevalent on the continent of Africa. However, poverty in general, is a problem our modern world with its resources, logistics, experience, richness, intelligence, and compassion should be able to alleviate to a substantial extent, instead the disparity between those that have and those that have not continues to widen, which is a disgrace.
While one can admire the success of any individual or enterprise, there is also at a minimum an implied obligationfor those that are successful to take care and to provide a helping hand in one form of another, to those that are less fortunate, less able, and those lacking in opportunity. It is our Christian obligation to treat others as we would like to be treated in return. Our world is no longer insular and hasn't been that way for a considerable amount of time. Injustice and poverty anywhere, is a threat to justice and prosperity everywhere. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to have been born under favorable circumstances, or favorable situations, or favorable families, or blessed in general, have an even greater obligation to provide assistance, in one form or another, to those who are far less fortunate. When the playing field of life is so grossly uneven, it is up to us, to take positive steps to see that our world is more balanced for our having been here, than for it to have gotten worse.
Oxfam International, a confederation of organizations working to resolving poverty worldwide, did some extensive research with statistics and calculations on the distribution of wealth in the world through the resources of Forbes, Credit Suisse, and the 2013 Global Wealth Report and Databook. Their published conclusion was that the richest 85 people in the world had the equivalent wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion people. Additionally, recently Oxfam updated this fact to state that "…using the 2014 Billionaires List, the number has now dropped to 67 individuals = 3.5 billion poorest."
That sort of massive concentration of wealth in the hands of so few individuals as compared to the overall impoverished state of so many other fellow human beings is staggering as well as disturbing. This massive amount of wealth is an effective plutocracy in which this money elite, these superrich, work hand-in-hand with government, legal, military, and corporate agencies on a worldwide and global basis so that they remain in power, they remain in control, and so that they are able to manage affairs in such a way as to continue to augment their riches.
The biggest difference today between the superrich and the dynasties of regimes from history, is the truly global scale of these riches presently. The mega-richest people in the world in one form of another have set up dynastic alignments in which their interests are essentially aligned with each other so that their power and their wealth will not be questioned or assaulted and will, in fact, be strengthened.
The end result of this concentration of wealth, in which the world has never been richer, is seen in the impoverishment, injustice, poor health, and lack of opportunity for so many.