What would it cost to eliminate poverty and ensure that each person on the planet enjoyed a ‘living wage’; enough income to meet their basic needs for a descent and good life?

First, the world’s leaders, along with the world’s billionaires, would have to issue a joint declaration of well-being, that all people on the planet are deserving of a sufficient ‘living wage’ that would meet their basic needs for a good life.

What is a living wage? A living wage is the income required to meet the basic needs for a reasonable good life of clean water, good air, good food, comfortable shelter, clothing and some healthy degree of autonomy.

The Catholic 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas (building on the ideas of Aristotle) said what is required of a good life is sufficiency of material needs (and hence sufficiency of income to finance those needs) and virtuous action).

Based on Plato and Aquinas, the key virtues to act upon are moderation, courage, justice and wisdom.

Reality Check: The Facts

The current estimated global poverty line is $1.45 per day or $530/yr.

$2.50/day ($912/yr) is the estimated poverty level in developing countries. In 2005, acccording to poverty facts currently roughly 50% of the world’s people (over 3.2 billion) live on $2.50/day while 80% (5.15 billion) live on $10/day or less.The $10 dollar a day (US $3,650/yr) figure above is close to poverty levels in the US.

The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.

In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%.

The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% of all consumption while the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption.

About 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets in 2004. The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”

A conservative estimate for 2010 is that at least a third of all private financial wealth, and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is now owned by world’s richest 91,000 people – just 0.001% of the world’s population.

The next 51 percent of all wealth is owned by the next 8.4 million — just 0.14% of the world’s population. Almost all of this financial wealth has managed to avoid all income and estate taxes, either by the countries where it has been invested and or where it comes from.

The world’s gross domestic product in 2006 was $48.2 trillion in 2006.

• The world’s wealthiest countries (approximately 1 billion people) accounted for $36.6 trillion dollars (76%).
• The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).
• Low income countries (2.4 billion people) accounted for just $1.6 trillion of GDP (3.3%)
• Middle income countries (3 billion people) made up the rest of GDP at just over $10 trillion (20.7%).

How much would this cost to eliminate poverty around the world (with 7.074 billion people and assuming the same distribution of poverty)?

To double the raise the income of roughly 5.64 billion (80% of the world’s population who live on less than $10/day) to $10.00/day would cost $29.39 billion/yr. (I have not included people in the developed countries who may not be earning $10/day).

The $29.39 billion is equivalent of 0.5% of the total estimated wealth of the 1,426 billions (according to Forbes latest wealth estimates).

Imagine a campaign to Bill Gates and the rest of the super wealthy to give 0.5% per annum of their estimated wealth as a ‘wellbeing’ dividend to the 5.6 billion living without a living wage.

If we bumped this up to my estimate of a ‘good life’  living wage of roughly US $4.00/work hours or roughly $20/day (averaged over 365 days), then the annual price tag would jump to $85.7 billion per year or 1.6% of the total wealth of the world’s wealthiest billionaires.

The Economy of Love

My vision for an economy of love may best be described as a genuine economy (economy comes from the Greek words oikos (household) nomia (stewardship)) that will replace the current economic system based on the lie of scarcity, GDP and profit maximization, the fear of tomorrow, debt-money, materialism/consumerism, and the love of money.

The new model — an economy of love — will be characterized as a flourishing economy of well-being, love and communion. This new model will be based on the truth of abundance of genuine wealth (defined in terms of ‘the conditions of well-being’ from the 13th Century Old English), the power of love, sufficiency of material needs, optimizing well-being returns on investment in human, social and natural capital, virtuous actions, reciprocity, genuine justice and genuine happiness (from the Greek eudaemonia which literally means ‘spiritual well-being.’

On January 11, 2013 I presented the following thoughts and ideas on the subject of Happiness to Creative Mornings Edmonton.

What is Creative Mornings? Every month in major cities around from New York to Madrid to Edmonton hosts, videographers, photographers, and helpers come together, in their respective cities, to discuss an important subject.

The global theme for January 2013 was Happiness.

Here is my presentation

January 2013 – Mark Anielski from CreativeMornings/EDM on Vimeo.

On April 12, 2012 I presented the following paper “Redesigning Money to Serve Economies of Well-being and Happiness” at a conference on Creating Money in a Finite World at the Claremont School of Theology, with my mentor John Cobb Jr. (co-author of For the Common Good, with Herman Daly), Ellen Brown (attorney and author of The Web of Debt), ecological economist Josh Farley, and others.

The paper builds on a similar proposal I made April 2, 2012 at the United Nations in New York at a high-level meeting, hosted by the Prime Minister of Bhutan, on developing a new economic paradigm based on wellbeing and happiness. I presented a similar proposal to George Soros and Ciao Koch-Weser (Vice Chairman of Deutsche Bank) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2011.

In this paper I explore the potential redesign of the world’s money and banking system such that the creation of money is no longer in the form of unrepayable debt (with compounding interest costs) but aligned with the goal of optimizing well-being and happiness for a good life. I proposed the money creation could be aligned with well-being and happiness, using the Genuine Wealth Model. This would align with Abraham Lincoln’s vision who said in 1865:

“Money is the creature of law, and the creation of the original issue of money should be maintained as the exclusive monopoly of national government. …The monetary needs of increasing numbers of people advancing towards higher standards of living can and should be met by the government. Such needs can be met by the issue of national currency and credit through the operation of a national banking system. The circulation of a medium of exchange issued and backed by the government can be properly regulated and redundancy of issue avoided by withdrawing from circulation such amounts as may be necessary by taxation, re-deposit and otherwise. Government, possessing the power to create and issue currency and credit as money…need not and should not borrow capital at interest….The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration…Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power.”

In this global debt crisis it is time for courageous leaders that would follow in the steps of the practical wisdom of Lincoln.

Redesigning Money to Serve Economies of Wellbeing

In the October 22, 2012 edition of TIME magazine (Business Section), the Pursuit of Happiness and Bhutan’s efforts to advance a new economic paradigm based on well-being and happiness (Gross National Happiness) was profiled including our work on developing Genuine Progress Indicators and building economies of well-being in Edmonton, Leduc and Alberta.

In the article my work, along with others such as Joseph Stiglitz (former chief economist of the World Bank and advisor to France on developing new measures of progress), is profiled.

‘The pace is picking up in Canada, where the province of Alberta and the city of Edmonton have supported the development of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. It’s similar to Bhutan’s GNH Index, but instead of using survey questions, Canadian researchers created a composite of 64 existing statistics, including work hours and  incidence of violent crime, that are considered proxies for various components of well-being. “We didn’t ask Canadians how they feel,” says Mark Anielski, who led the project. Once countries start measuring well-being, it isn’t clear how they should use the data. In Edmonton, the new well-being index is intended simply as another data point to guide long-range strategic planning. At most, “we start to pay attention to inequality of well-being,” Anielski says.’

I believe the world is on the cusp of a major economic paradigm shift from a narrow focus of economic growth (GDP) and profits, to one based on optimizing well-being. I am about to travel to China (Harbin and Shanghai) to encourage China to pursue a new economic vision of an economy of well-being, building on their economic model of a Xiaokang society (a Confucian term meaning a society of moderation). In July 2012 I travelled to Tahiti (French Polynesia) encouraging this beautiful South Pacific community to adopt a new economic of well-being paradigm.

The Pursuit Of Happiness – TIME Oct 22, 2012