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How can we allow this to happen?

On the drive in to work this morning, I heard that 85 people own half of the world's wealth. Half! While children starve to death every day, they sit on their immense mounds of wealth and do little or nothing. I believe that people are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor, but I also believe that we have a moral duty to do help others. When I had disposable income, I used to give up to half of it to different charities where almost all of the income dollars went to help people in need. They don't have to give half. A tiny fraction of the wealth of these 85 people would feed EVERY hungry person in the world AND provide basic medical care.

But it doesn't happen. How can they sit on that much and do so little? Why do we allow it? Is it anything we can change? I don't have any answers, just a sense of despair because something that could easily be fixed is allowed to happen.

edit: It was pointed out that my statement about 85 people owning half of the wealth is wrong, so I looked it up. I must have mis-heard the radio report because as Marjatta stated, they merely own as much as the 3.5 billion poorest people. I still think it's obscene that with that many resources, only a few of them even try to do anything.

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