World Economy 2009

Friday, April 3, 2009


World Economy 2009

In London, a very important meeting on the state of the world economy has just taken place. What is striking is that those 20 countries make up 80% of the world economy, even though they make up only 1/5 (one fifth) of the world's population. So if we suppose that the world is only 100 people, then 20 of them have 80% of the wealth while the other 80 guys have only the remainder 20% of the wealth.

This is shocking, isn't it? So poor country ministers might complain about this and protest that rich countries should do more to help poor countries since they have all the money. But the question is "Does the same ratio hold in poor countries?" I mean, if we look at India, Egypt, or Sudan, is wealth there concentrated in the hands of the few lucky ones while the rest of the country lies in utter poverty?

My feeling is that the divide between the rich and the poor is also shocking in the third world countries just as the divide is shockingly vast between the industrial countries and the third world countries.

The solution to this problem could be in the Islamic law which stipulates that Muslims give fifth of their yearly profit to the poor. Rich countries have to also pay fifth of their yearly profit to a global fund which in turn gives that money to the poor countries.

Posted by taekwon79tkd at 1:30 PM 0 comments