Research shows the 85 richest billionaires in the world each have at least as much as the poorest 3.5 billion people combined.
Over three years ago billionaire investor Warren Buffett made the observation that the richest billionaires in the world make more money than billions of the poorest people in the world combined, and according to Oxfam (an organization with a goal to reduce world poverty) Buffett's statement continues to hold true today.
Between March 2013 and March 2014 Oxfam estimated that the same 85 billionaires making just as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion were watching their wealth grow by $668 million per day, reports USA Today.
Some argue that these statistics should be shouting one thing at the rich - pay up.
"I used to believe," Peter Edelman, former US Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary, wrote in his book "So Rich, So Poor," "that the debate over wealth distribution should be conducted separately from the poverty debate, in order to minimize the attacks on antipoverty advocates for engaging in 'class warfare.' But now we literally cannot afford to separate the two issues."
The "economic and political power of those at the top," Edelman said, is "making it virtually impossible to find the resources to do more at the bottom.
"The only way we will improve the lot of the poor, stabilize the middle class, and protect our democracy is by requiring the rich to pay more of the cost of governing the country that enables their huge accretion of wealth."
Although it's not very common to see billionaires shelling out enough money to help the poor, those billionaires could make significant donations to help end the world's poverty while still maintaining their wealth.
If Bill Gates, for example, who was listed by Forbes as America's richest billionaire, spent $1 million every day, it would take him 218 years to exhaust his funds (without taking into consideration that he would be earning millions a day in interest on the rest of his wealth), reports USA Today.
