Surprise, surprise - The rich get richer

The truism that the rich get richer — well most of the time anyway — was not confounded in 2014.

The Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people, recorded yesterday that the world’s 400 richest people got richer in the last 12 months adding $92bn to their collective worth. Bill Gates, 59, co-founder of Microsoft, remains the richest person with a $87.6bn nest egg at his disposal.

By any yardstick these figures are fantastic but they do illustrate the ever-widening gap between the world’s mega-rich and the world’s ground-down poor. They also underline the urgent need to try to rebalance how people’s lives are defined by opportunity or the availability of basic, life-sustaining resources. But is was ever thus.