Justice, unity would solve income inequality

The growing income gap between the world’s richest and the poorest was again confirmed by a recently published report by the British charity Oxfam. The report, titled, “Working For the Few,” claims that a small elite group of more than 85 individuals hold wealth equivalent to that owned by the bottom half of the world's population. The study further says that the top 1 percent have 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.

The growing income gap between the world’s richest and the poorest was again confirmed by a recently published report by the British charity Oxfam. The report, titled, “Working For the Few,” claims that a small elite group of more than 85 individuals hold wealth equivalent to that owned by the bottom half of the world's population.

The study further says that the top 1 percent have 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.

In the United States, America's 400 richest families have more wealth than the entire bottom 50 percent of the population combined and the country ranks 64th in the world in income inequality.
Today, U.S. income inequality has been increasing steadily since the 1970s and now has reached high levels not seen since 1928.

It is sad that in the 21st century, a relatively small percentage of humankind has immense wealth, while the majority of the world's population lives in dire poverty and misery. This imbalance exists both within nations and between nations. Moreover, the gap that separates rich and poor continues to widen, which indicates that the current existing economic systems are incapable of restoring a just balance.

While the economic crisis in various countries has led many to focus on inequalities at the national level, the extremes between rich and poor internationally have also grown to become a threat to global stability. Many member countries of the United Nations have agreed to raise income inequality as outstanding issues on the international agenda.

In an interconnected world, where the wealth of many of the world’s richest individuals exceeds the gross domestic product of entire nations, extreme poverty and extreme wealth exist side by side. While the leaders of the world and the community leaders are working towards finding remedial efforts to solve the problems of the poor, they fail to probe the concentration of the wealth in the hands of the few people in the world. This need urgent attention.

The Baha’i International Community in New York, in one of its recent reports, offered two principles as guides for efforts in the realm of poverty eradication: justice and unity.

Justice provides the means capable of harnessing human potential to eradicate poverty from our midst, through the implementation of laws, the adjustment of economic systems, the redistribution of wealth and opportunity, and unfailing adherence to the highest ethical standards in private and public life. Unity asserts that progress is systemic and relational, that a concern for the integrity of the family unit and the local national, and global community must guide poverty alleviation efforts.

A satisfactory solution to narrow the gap between rich and poor and to eradicate poverty lies in a profound change of heart and mind which only religion can produce. The human and material resources at our disposal must be used for the long-term good of all, not for the short-term advantage of a few.

This can be done only if cooperation becomes the basis of organized economic activity among business leaders and among nations. Cooperation gives life to society just as the life of an organism is maintained by the cooperation of the various elements of which it is composed.

The fundamentals of the whole economic condition are divine in nature and are associated with the world of the heart and spirit.

The disease which afflicts the body politic is lack of love and absence of altruism.