Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet would cost about $20 billion. Let's just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.
Trade is now clearly designed to favor the wealthiest and most powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The three wealthiest people on earth now control more assets than the combined incomes of 600 million people in the world's 48 poorest countries.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the disparity in wealth distribution and how trade laws benefit the rich over the poor.
Jim Wallis emphasizes the alarming concentration of wealth among the world's richest individuals and how current trade practices disproportionately benefit powerful corporations. He points out that the three wealthiest people possess assets comparable to the combined earnings of millions living in extreme poverty, shedding light on the stark inequalities that exist in global economics and urging for a reexamination of trade policies that favor the affluent.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on economic policies, a speaker could use this quote to illustrate how current trade practices impact the poor.
More from Jim Wallis
All quotes →You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.
Healthcare should be a human right and not a commodity for sale.
Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.
At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city grandmother in the United States or a mother of the disappeared in Argentina or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps. They all weep for their children, and in their compassionate tears arises the political action that changes the world. The mothers show us that it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change.
Similar quotes
America's role in the global economy inevitably was going to diminish; we're smaller relative to - as China, India, other emerging markets grow.
The role of liquidity in systemic events provides yet another reason why, in the future, a more system wide or macroprudential approach to regulation is needed.
The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.
If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.
Building new roads and bridges creates jobs. Growing our exports creates jobs. Reforming our outdated tax system and our broken immigration system creates jobs.
I'm of those who believe that excesses in all matters are not a good idea, whether it's formation of bubbles, whether it's excess in the financial market, whether it's excess of inequality, it has to be watched, it has to be measured, and it has to be anticipated in terms of consequences.