First World Problems

Today I finished reading the last book in the Hunger Games Trilogy. It may not be considered a literary classic or particularly sophisticated but it most certainly raises some interesting questions. Something which struck me early on was the disgust I felt for the people of the capitol. For the first few chapters the book describes abject poverty and some amount of injustice. When Peeta and Katniss visit the capitol, their evaluations of the people of the capitol struck me as familiar. Whether intended or not the comparison is very easy to apply to our world. If you look at the graph of inequality in a previous post, it becomes obvious that its the same as the world we live in. Although not any more through military might but by economic, developing countries are suppressed  as the developed nations thrash around to stay at the top. Katniss frequently speaks as the capitol people as weak and with high standards of living. Reminding me only of the first world problems meme. We live in a pretty tame part of the world, using our iPhones from District 3 where that particular factory's suicide rate, although shockingly high, is considered average. Furthermore wearing our Primark clothes from district 8 and having stockpiles of food so huge, that it rots rather than feeding the needy. Worst of all, I feel impotent, it seems no action I can take will help. If you don't buy from developing countries you starve them of all income movement in selfish nationalism and if you do you are lining the pockets of frankly horrible multinational corporations. Even aid or Fairtrade is often seen as counter-productive, catching the poor in cycles of dependence. Perhaps that's the real and only First World Problem.

Gross Inequality

I'm a mathematician, as most people know in maths there are symbols called inequalities, these compare the values telling us which is larger. There's some more closely related symbols, I'm not sure what they are called but they mean simply "loads bigger" or "loads smaller", usually denoted like this ">>". To say the incomes of the developed nations is > the incomes of the developing nations, is not only obvious by definition but almost a gross crime. Even to use >> doesn't sum it up. Perhaps I'm just a naive mathematician but there's something wrong with that graph. The 60-95% range isn't even worth mentioning compared to the stark contrast in the 0% and 100% areas. Even those 4 dots don't do it justice, there are those who earn enough to punch a hole through your screen and through your ceiling. Perhaps a quote from Wikipedia will help.

"As of May 2005, the three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 47 countries with the least GDP"

It was hypothesised that this would decrease, it was said in Victorian times that the gross inequality then would level out. But it hasn't, the trend is that it is increasing, as liquidity of money increases, the more inequality there is. I'm seriously not decrying the internet or Facebook, but when a random undergrad stumbles upon a $70Billion gold mind, you've got to start asking questions. I only have to own about £1500 and I'm in the top half of the asset owning game. That's peanuts. When we have enough why do we continue to need? What do we think we are going to gain? On a moment to moment basis we are driven by happiness, we want more because of the promise of happiness and yet we all know having more than enough gives us nothing of the sort. Why do we keep running on the treadmill? I say this as a runner, I find it impossible to denounce possessions even in the light of reason. What good would it achieve anyway? To have power and give it away without doing anything with it is irresponsible and needlessly self-righteous. If anyone's got any suggestions...