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wealth. You’ll be amazed how you and your family
can have an impact on the whol“e world. already. e present annual global military expen-
If you wish to take any one of these initiatives,
we at the Yunus Centre would be happy to o er our
services to make it happen. Making money tration within and between Don’t hesitate to contact us. nations becomes acute, social, In addition, to experiment is happiness, political and economic com- with social business you can pulsions for armed con icts create a joint venture with but making other will become imminent.
your friends, or your interna- people happy is e time is ripe for us tional business partners, and to recognize the gravity of
see how it feels. It could be the situation on wealth con- as small as you want. Size is super happiness. centration, and take actions no issue. e purpose is the Don’t miss the super against it. As we learn from
issue. Bangladesh has been happiness. a pioneer in bringing down
poverty by half. e world has
applauded it. We can be the leader in reversing the process of wealth inequality too. Instead of allowing inequality to increase each year, faster than previ-
ous year, we can make it decline each year, as the economy grows. en we can call for a global Paris conference (or maybe a Dhaka conference) to bring all the nations of the world together to tell the story of how we made it happen, and who did what in the process. e conference will end by inviting the UN to convene a conference to let every nation declare a deadline when it will stop the increase in wealth gap and reverse the process. It would be similar
to the global commitment to stop the increase in global temperature and hold it under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
conclusion
Wealth concentration is a global threat. It
has already entered the danger zone this year
with 99% of wealth going to 1% of people. Not only it is getting worse globally, it is getting worse within nations, and between nations. A wealth gap between nations is always a threat to peace. Histor- ically some nations accumulated more wealth than others. Some nations took unfair advantage over other nations in accumulating their wealth. ere are old scores to settle and there are new scores taking shape. is leads to confrontations, con ict, and wars. If a nation feels threatened, they hike up
the process of arriving at an international consensus on global warming, we can initi-
ate a similar process to build a global consensus on bringing the speed of wealth concentration to zero in phase one, and making it negative in phase two.
Both global warming and wealth concentra- tion arise from the same root – a awed economic framework based on human greed. We can undo both by reinventing ourselves in the economic world as caring and sharing human beings.
We may aim at creating a world of three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emission. A world of diamond-shaped wealth distribution. A world of equality, harmony, peace and happiness. It can happen only if we citi- zens get into the action.
Let’s do it. ■
Professor Muhammad Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his transformative impact. He is the founder of Grameen Bank, the pioneering Dhaka-based organization that spread microcredit and micro nance globally.
Acknowledgment: This article is based on the speech delivered at the 25th Anniversary event of the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star on February 5, 2016 in Dhaka.
MarketiNg for social chaNge
their military budget, which is shockingly huge
diture stands at over $1.7 trillion. e U.S. alone accounts for 39% of this total. If the wealth concen-
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