Reflections

– About a frightening inequality
– About heroic virtues
– About anguish at the steering wheelAbout a frightening inequality

1. The Walton family, Walmart’s owner, has 1.157.827 times more wealth than the American average: they accumulated as much money as the 48.8 million other poorer families. Economic Policy Institute.

2. In 2012 Italy’s ten largest fortunes had as much money as the three million other poorer Italians. Guillaume Delacroix.

3. In India, a country with more than a billion inhabitants, 61 millionaires in 2008 captured 22% of the country’s wealth. Financial Times.

4. In 2009, 6 out of the 400 most prosper American tax payers did not pay any taxes, 27 paid less than 10%, none paid more than 35%.
Statisctics gathered by Serge Halimi, Le monde Diplomatique May 2013

About heroic virtues

When we have reduced needless servitude to a minimum, and avoided unnecessary ills we are still left with a long series of true evils to keep the heroic virtues alive: death, old age, incurable illnesses, unrequited love, friendship rejected or betrayed, the mediocrity of a life that is always on a smaller scale than we looked for and less colorful than our dreams.

Marguerite Yourcenar

About anguish at the steering wheel

Where anguish steers, aggression becomes helmsman.

Juan Federico Laub