As at 2016, this year, Wikipaedia has listed around 30 people in Australia with over $1 billion. Gina Rinehart was, until fairly recently, the richest person in Aus worth $11.18 billion. The richest now is another woman, Blair Parry-Okeden, a USA-born Australian heiress, worth $11.68 billion. (Wikipaedia) I don’t understand how anyone can enjoy the money that too many of our population will never, ever see.
In 2012 the Australian Council of Social Service said that as at 2010 “after taking account of housing costs, an estimated 2,265,000 people or 12.5% of all people, including 575,000 children (17.3% of all children), lived in households below the most austere poverty line widely used in international research.” (Wikipaedia)
In 2014 ACOSS reported that “poverty is growing in Australia with an estimated 2.5 million people or 13.9% of all people living below the internationally accepted poverty line” (ACOSS website), and also provided a Word report called Poverty in Australia: New Estimates and Recent Trends Research Methodology for 2014 Report.
Let me ask you a question. How much do you earn in your salary or wages? Is it more than $800 per week? According to ACOSS, “Poverty line (50% of median income) – for a single adult was $400 per week…” My DSP adds up to something like $470 per week – 8% above the poverty line. That is less than when I started work here 11 years ago – back then I only worked 3 days a week and I received $503 a week.
Most of the time I feel very sad for so many people in this country who live just over, just on or under the poverty line and can’t get themselves a decent income to live a decent real life. Running a daily budget has become essential to ensure that we don’t live over our very low income, but the inability to save can cut unbudgeted costs. Like clothes, haircuts, insurance, car repair, tyres, dinner out, holidays, gym. Just the things that people who earn a decent income can allow for.
In today’s dollars, some websites laid out information about historical men who had walked or fought their way into money (listed below). It didn’t look very different than I had learned about at school many years ago, but way back then I really felt that the world would change, that WWI and WWII had changed people, that religion concentrated on poorer people and not on their own money, and that jobs were easy to find. I grew up thinking that we’d gone a long, long way past these sort of people.
10th century, Basil II, something like $170
billion dollars as the Byzantine Emperor.
11th century, William the Conqueror, $230
billion dollars. He got it by pillaging.
12th century, Genghis Khan - however much
he had was unknown but seemed to amount to… well, heaps. He also got it by
pillaging.
13th century, banker Filippo di Amedeo de Peruzzi, up
to $200 billion. He lost much of it and was kicked out of Florence, Italy.
14th century, Mansa Musa I, $400 billion
maybe but that was a guess. He was one of those gold miners. And salt.
15th century, Jakob Fugger, more than
$275 billion. Charles
V gave Fugger the right to mint his own money, and his family also had most of
the European copper market.
16th
century, Suleiman
the Magnificent, no records, or Akbar the Great
for somewhere around $340 billion. No records were held about just what Suleiman
had, but it was very much. Akbar had “a ruling pattern which
was epitomized by a centralized system of administration throughout the Mughal
empire”.
17th century, Aurangzeb from India. He
made his wealth from tributes.
18th century, Stephen Girard or Cornelius
Vanderbilt, both worth around $105 billion. Girard made his by personally
underwriting America from financial collapse during the War of 1812, and
Vanderbilt had lots of shipping and railroads.
19th
century, the
Rothschild family, more than $300 billion. London-based bankers, financing Napoleonic
wars and simply getting bigger after that.
20th century, John D. Rockefeller, around
$340 billion, and all from the world’s oil production. Also Andrew Carnegie at
$298 billion. He’d started for a pittance wage as a young boy, and by his death
he’d made his own empire.
21st century, Muammar Gaddafi, just a tad
ahead of Henry Ford. Gaddafi, after death, had around $200 billion tucked away
in secret bank accounts probably around the world.
This government must allow themselves some caring mentality for those who did not choose our worst life. This government must turn their budget around to help people like me, without blaming us.
Will that ever happen?
