The world's wealth

Thomas Sowell wonders, so whose wealth is it anyway?  He's talking about the leftist obsession with the gap between the rich and the poor -- a crisis that will instantaneously disappear once a Democrat is in the White House, by the way.  Until then, however, news stories will stoke the fires of envy with analysis lamenting the concentration of “the world’s wealth” in the hands of a small fraction of the world’s people.

Who are these minority of the world’s population who own a majority of the world’s wealth?

They are the population of the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and a few other affluent countries. How did these particular people come to possess so much more wealth than other people?

They did it the old-fashioned way. They produced the wealth that they own. You might as well ask why bees have so much more honey than other creatures.

But people are not bees, even in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.  Anybody can produce wealth, even in non-bee places like Africa and the Middle East.  In fact the Middle East is a perfect example.  Totalitarian Arab nations supplying the world's oil and awash in riches, suffer an insurmountable gap between the rich and poor that has laid the foundation for world wide terrorism.  That gap is insurmountable because totalitarian corruption prevents their people from producing the wealth that will improve their lives.

Israel has nowhere near the natural resources of the Arab states, yet they are wealthier by far.  According to the CIA World Factbook, Israel produces a measely 2740 barrels of oil per day.  At the same time Saudi Arabia puts out 9,475,000, and Iran 3,979,000.  Yet Israel enjoys a per capita GDP of $25,000, while Saudi Arabia and Iran come in at $13,100 and $8,400 respectively.  The income gap is not a crisis in Israel because Israelis have the freedom to produce wealth.  Arab state citizens have less freedom, less wealth, and less hope for getting it.

Unfortunately, leftists (and Democrats) can't bring themselves to support the spread of freedom.  Their antidote to the growing gap between the rich and the poor is to prevent the creation of wealth.  Taxation discourages an activity, so the lefty solution to their contrived crisis is to tax wealth (income) at ever higher rates as a person demonstrates ever higher success in creating it.  The Arab solution is to wipe Israel off the map.  Actually, there are  Democrats who seem to be coming around to that view.