MLK Day: Five Other Men We Should Also Talk About
Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of ending injustice and poverty in America, not just for the Black man, but for all Americans. As we celebrate him today, there are five other men we should also be talking about.
Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos. Warren Buffet. Larry Ellison. Bernard Arnault.
Six decades after delivering his “I Have A Dream” speech, more Americans continue to slip into financial ruin. According to a new report, almost five billion people have slid down the economic slope since 2020, while the world’s five richest men mentioned above have more than doubled their billions during this same short time span.
As the the ultra-rich take ever larger slices of humanity’s collective wealth, global violence has become the new normal as have the ensuing massive migrations from the poorer Global South continents such as Latin America and Africa to the Global North which includes US, Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia.
But if there’s a will to fix this injustice and put new income into the hands of many, it can happen best at the local city level. And if We the people could, as Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently said, “Transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood,” we could bring an end to this greatest financial heist in all of human history.
Read more in NPR, and let us know what do you think.
Tin Cup
Nicely said.
Well Street
The economist's point about the shortcomings of wealth redistribution in favor of the poor was interesting, and how governments should invest more to improve public services to "propel people out of poverty."
While reading this article, I was reminded of business owners I used to know who shared myopic and elitist perspectives. They would say the wealth gap is merely capitalism at work and survival of the fittest.
Evangel
That is what they would say, but they are clueless as to what the phrase has always meant: those who are best adjusted to their physical environment are most apt to succeed and reproduce in that environment. It's not about machismo or who has more money. It's about biology, our ecosystem, and who can best outlive the mess these men, through their insatiable greed, have created.