Clean water is one of the most important things to anyone and everyone (second only to nacho cheese). Yet millions around the world don’t have clean water or struggle to get it. A report by the U.N. “estimated that 300 million people on the continent [of Africa], more than a third of the population, have no fixed supply [of clean water].” And 2.5 billion worldwide lack proper sanitation. The CDC says 2,200 children die a day from diarrheal diseases—mostly from unclean water.
Millions of people in total die each year from a lack of clean water. So how much would it cost to change that? It would cost $10 billion a year to bring pure water to the entire world.
Jeff Bezos himself could provide the world with clean water for the next 15 years.
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty while the U.N. in 2015 estimated it would cost $30 billion a year to end world hunger.
Jeff Bezos himself could end world hunger for five straight years. If he teamed up with the Koch brothers, they could do it for eight to 10 years.
But Bezos wouldn’t do that. Instead, he’ll just make billions convincing people to put Amazon Echo spy systems into their own homes.
This column is not about Jeff Bezos. It’s about Flint, Mich.
You remember how upset we were about Flint’s water? It was poisoned with lead. It was destroying lives of people who were already poor to begin with. Then the authorities came to the conclusion it would cost $216 million to fix, and everyone was aghast. That’s an insane amount of money. How could ANY city afford that?!
Jeff Bezos could pay to repair Flint’s water supply 694 times over.
There are 554,000 homeless people in the U.S., one of the richest countries in the world. In Wichita an apartment costs $632 per month. (In San Francisco that’s the cost of the monthly utility bill for a dog house.) So $632 per month amounts to $7,584 per year. Therefore, the total cost to give every American houseless person an apartment in Wichita would be $4.2 billion.
Jeff Bezos could give every homeless person their own apartment for the next 36 YEARS.
If you removed Bezos from Amazon tomorrow and vacuumed all his money away, he would be replaced by another sick hoarder of egregious wealth. This is because we have a deathly ill economic system. Think about it this way—the goals of our economy (and any economy).