Greed Makes the World Suffer

When is enough, enough?

Photo by Raghuvansh Luthra on Unsplash

I’ve traveled to India. I saw barefoot children begging, people living in shacks made of trash, and abandoned elderly lying in dirt.

India is also home to many rich people who live like rajahs of yore.

With recent modernization, it looked like India was lifting people out of poverty. The middle class was expanding. For a while, India was the country with the greatest rate of poverty reduction.

In 2019, it was reported by the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index that India lifted 271 million citizens out of poverty between 2006 and 2016. Now, however, thanks to the pandemic, India once again has the highest global poverty. The country’s middle class has shrunk by a third.

Being poor in India is no picnic.

Until recently, being poor in America was a situation that was envied by the poor from other places. As a friend of mine from the Philippines once told me — at least in America the poor have access to running water.

This was decades ago, however, when homelessness, addiction, and despair weren’t destroying lives.

Meanwhile — the rich continue to live lives of conspicuous consumption. Members of Congress talk about how happy they are to be getting electric cars. Well, Mazel Tov…