What do you do with this?

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Thursday, February 20, 2014   Jeff Lampl

Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly.
 And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?'
Luke 12:16-17 (NRSV)

So, how do you respond to information like this from Oxfam?   How does what we’ve learned about the Kingdom of God shape how we read this information?   What does it say about American Church life?  

“Given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend. For instance:  

·         The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85
     people in the world.

·         Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the
    population.

·        The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion.
   That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.

·        Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased
   in the last 30 years.

·        The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries
   for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.

·        In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis
   growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer”          

 

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