Uploaded April 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
The Wealth Distribution in the World
One of the astounding facts of our time is the ____________ of wealth going to the very top of the wealth distribution in the world.
It's mind-boggling. Mind-boggling to think of Jeff Bezos for example, with a net worth, personally individual net worth of, hold on to your chair; how about a 163 billion dollars? That's a lot of money.
It's, I'm myself an Amazon a user, I think it's awfully good service and product that he's developed. But a 163 billion dollars, in a world where a lot of his workers struggle to ______ __. A lot of the people in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, our homeless, where there are incredible needs that for a ____________ fraction of that wealth could keep millions of kids alive and in school.
You have to say, “Alright, world economy is dynamic”, but it's not really exactly fair and it's not really oriented towards addressing everyone's basic human rights and needs.
What's happened to the wealth at the top? It’s amazing.
Back in 2006, there were about 700 billionaires or so. That was a lot and they had a net worth, if you added up all of their stocks and bonds and other ____________, of something on the order of about 3 trillion dollars and I would sit there and say, “Oh, My God can you imagine this?”
And in just a dozen years, a dozen years, even in a dozen years with a mega financial crisis in between, the billionaires went from about 700 or so, to now 2208 - on the most recent Forbes magazine list of billionaires. And their net worth went from around 3 trillion, which was absolutely mind-boggling to begin with, to 9.1 trillion dollars at the start of 2018, when Forbes published the list. And now, almost surely well above 10 trillion dollars, including this phenomenal __________ of Mr. Bezos, the richest person in the world but many others.
Now, Bill Gates who is far and away the world's leading philanthropist, because he was long the richest person in the world and he and Melinda Gates, very rightly generously wisely in a visionary way said, “We're gonna give this away”.
I created the biggest foundation in the world, ‘The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’, they've been putting in several billion dollars a year to fighting disease and doing a fantastic job.
But consider this, in 2010, Bill Gates called on other billionaires, “join in and make a ________”, called a ‘Giving Pledge’, to give away at least half of your wealth during your lifetime. And Bill Gates took that pledge himself.
At that point, his net worth was about 50 billion dollars. He's been giving away _____________ 4 billion a year since then. And you might think his net worth has gone down a bit given that generosity, but his net worth now is 93 billion dollars. So the wealth is such a gusher, that you can give billions away and it just keeps growing and growing and growing beyond anything that most of us mortals can even imagine.
What I know, as an economist that has worked all over the world including the poorest places in the world; little bits can save lives and make futures for the children of this world at unbelievably low-cost, and it just gets me that we have 10 trillion dollars here, and we have kids who are hungry, dying and out of school over here and can't we make the connection.
And the answer is, we have to. So my thought is, at a minimum 10 trillion, ‘Come on, put in at least 1%’. That's such a tiny amount because your wealth grows much more than that. Put in 1% of your net worth per year minimum, to help the kids - 1% of 10 trillion is a hundred billion dollars. And if you take out your paper and pencil or your Excel spreadsheet, you can show that for a hundred billion dollars a year, 1% of the net worth of just 2208 individuals, you could get every kid in school, all the way through upper secondary education and you could establish universal health coverage for everybody in every low-income country in the world. That's pretty good to 2208 people. But they got to get on with it. I think they have enough yachts, enough mansions, enough of everything, and it's really time for that wealth to be _____________ for the purposes of our generation of children who need it. And I say, do it voluntarily because we're gonna get this job done, we're gonna get every child health care, we're gonna get every child into school.
) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
The Wealth Distribution in the World
One of the astounding facts of our time is the ____________ of wealth going to the very top of the wealth distribution in the world.
It's mind-boggling. Mind-boggling to think of Jeff Bezos for example, with a net worth, personally individual net worth of, hold on to your chair; how about a 163 billion dollars? That's a lot of money.
It's, I'm myself an Amazon a user, I think it's awfully good service and product that he's developed. But a 163 billion dollars, in a world where a lot of his workers struggle to ______ __. A lot of the people in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, our homeless, where there are incredible needs that for a ____________ fraction of that wealth could keep millions of kids alive and in school.
You have to say, “Alright, world economy is dynamic”, but it's not really exactly fair and it's not really oriented towards addressing everyone's basic human rights and needs.
What's happened to the wealth at the top? It’s amazing.
Back in 2006, there were about 700 billionaires or so. That was a lot and they had a net worth, if you added up all of their stocks and bonds and other ____________, of something on the order of about 3 trillion dollars and I would sit there and say, “Oh, My God can you imagine this?”
And in just a dozen years, a dozen years, even in a dozen years with a mega financial crisis in between, the billionaires went from about 700 or so, to now 2208 - on the most recent Forbes magazine list of billionaires. And their net worth went from around 3 trillion, which was absolutely mind-boggling to begin with, to 9.1 trillion dollars at the start of 2018, when Forbes published the list. And now, almost surely well above 10 trillion dollars, including this phenomenal __________ of Mr. Bezos, the richest person in the world but many others.
Now, Bill Gates who is far and away the world's leading philanthropist, because he was long the richest person in the world and he and Melinda Gates, very rightly generously wisely in a visionary way said, “We're gonna give this away”.
I created the biggest foundation in the world, ‘The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’, they've been putting in several billion dollars a year to fighting disease and doing a fantastic job.
But consider this, in 2010, Bill Gates called on other billionaires, “join in and make a ________”, called a ‘Giving Pledge’, to give away at least half of your wealth during your lifetime. And Bill Gates took that pledge himself.
At that point, his net worth was about 50 billion dollars. He's been giving away _____________ 4 billion a year since then. And you might think his net worth has gone down a bit given that generosity, but his net worth now is 93 billion dollars. So the wealth is such a gusher, that you can give billions away and it just keeps growing and growing and growing beyond anything that most of us mortals can even imagine.
What I know, as an economist that has worked all over the world including the poorest places in the world; little bits can save lives and make futures for the children of this world at unbelievably low-cost, and it just gets me that we have 10 trillion dollars here, and we have kids who are hungry, dying and out of school over here and can't we make the connection.
And the answer is, we have to. So my thought is, at a minimum 10 trillion, ‘Come on, put in at least 1%’. That's such a tiny amount because your wealth grows much more than that. Put in 1% of your net worth per year minimum, to help the kids - 1% of 10 trillion is a hundred billion dollars. And if you take out your paper and pencil or your Excel spreadsheet, you can show that for a hundred billion dollars a year, 1% of the net worth of just 2208 individuals, you could get every kid in school, all the way through upper secondary education and you could establish universal health coverage for everybody in every low-income country in the world. That's pretty good to 2208 people. But they got to get on with it. I think they have enough yachts, enough mansions, enough of everything, and it's really time for that wealth to be _____________ for the purposes of our generation of children who need it. And I say, do it voluntarily because we're gonna get this job done, we're gonna get every child health care, we're gonna get every child into school.
