Dateline: Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Where it (the state of the human race) stands:
Human beings, most of them poor:
Families Feel Sharp Edge of State Budget Cuts
.... The percentage of children living in poverty rose during the last decade, particularly once the recession hit and unemployment soared.
By 2009, about 2.4 million more children’s families lived below the poverty line than in 2000, an increase of 18 percent, according to a recent analysis of Census Bureau data by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a child advocacy group. In states like this, where Republicans took control of the capital this year, the new cuts have helped resolve Michigan’s expected budget gap, once estimated at $1.4 billion.
.... Signs of new poverty are already evident. A project by the Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Book found that by 2010, nearly 11 percent of the nation’s children, or 7.8 million children, had at least one parent who was unemployed, when only about half as many were in such circumstances in 2007. And since four years ago, the study found, at least 5.3 million children have been affected by home foreclosures....
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In India (and presumably elsewhere in the world):
Children Who Sell Themselves
.... Children as young as 10 had begun to directly offer themselves to traffickers because they could no longer go hungry.... Better-off families in Amni eat twice a day. The village has never had electricity, running water or land to cultivate. There are no opportunities for education or employment, and the upper-caste families in the neighboring village routinely coopt government provisions meant to alleviate the grim, hard lives of Amni’s lower-caste Dalit families.
Poverty has traditionally fed child labor. India has an estimated 17 million child laborers, many of whom are visible in roadside restaurants, bakeries and car repair shops....
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Amazingly, some families in the Philippines (and elsewhere in the world) have a very different problem, how to handle huge family wealth:
Learning to Manage the Family Wealth
.... Several private banks, including UBS, Citigroup and Barclays, now run tailored programs for the children of their high-net-worth clients. The banks report that attendance has been growing among ultra-high-net-worth Asian clients, those with investable assets in the bank of over $50 million.... In early July, Credit Suisse held in Singapore a five-day “Legacy Program: Perspectives for the Next Generation” with about 30 participants aged 20 to 30 from across the region. The bank said demand from clients prompted them to run a second Mandarin-language version of the program in August.
....“They often come away with a new network of friends and business contacts... The program offers a safe forum, comprised of others who are of the same age range and who share common problems and generational issues. The opportunity to connect with others is often the most valuable part of the program.”...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In fact, the problem of managing family wealth is so humongous, it is necessary to set up a special office just for that purpose:
Setting Up an Office to Manage a Wealthy Family's Affairs
.... Family offices — professional structures that help run the affairs of wealthy families — are relatively new in the Asia-Pacific region. Of the 6,000 or so family offices in the world, only 500 are in that area.
Yet in recent months, several banks, including HSBC, Credit Suisse, UBS and Citigroup, have established or ramped up dedicated family services in Asia to help clients set up such offices, attesting to the rising demand for such services.
Richard Straus, head of Citigroup Private Bank’s newly established global family office and institutional business in North Asia, predicts that the number of Asian family offices could rise to 1,000 to 1,500 by 2015....
http://www.nytimes.com/...
What a startling contrast!
I'd call that game:
Wealth (One Million Plus) - Poverty (Zero, if not Negative)
And the Banksters are leveraging it so that odds are increased to benefit the wealthy.