HANH TAT

In a world where money is king, I believe that a shift in the definition of wealth would help work towards creating a better world. Here, I’m talking less about the average person and more about those who have significantly more wealth than any individual needs.

I did some calculations based on the latest figures I could find (from 2022).

These figures estimated that the wealthiest 10% in the world owned roughly 76% of global wealth in that year. This equated to roughly $345.3 trillion.

1% of this is $3.453 trillion

To put this into context, this 1% was more than the GDP of the UK ($3.07 tr) and India ($3.39 tr) for that year. If this wealth could be used to help those in need, what changes could be seen in the world?

“To be clear, I am as much of a fan of money as the next person, appreciating it as a tool that enables us to live comfortably and enjoy wonderful experiences, acutely aware of its power to buy us the freedom to do what we want with our time. But I think the definition of wealth that has served the modern world so well for so long is in need of review. So far, wealth in developed societies has been measured by the number of zeros at the end of a person’s bank balance and I think that the time has come for a change in this perception.

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What if, instead of measuring a person’s wealth solely by the amount of money a person has, we were to also include the amount of happiness a person is able to bring into other people’s lives, as well as how much true, inner joy a person has within themselves? Granted, as a statistician, I appreciate that this would be incredibly difficult to measure, but that shouldn’t be a reason for not making this something for people to aspire to or strive for.

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If we were to change our general definition of wealth away from the purely material of the present day, to incorporate more intangible elements such as kindness, care and charity, what would that look like?

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If a nation’s wealth were to be measured not solely by its GDP, but also by the happiness and general well-being of its citizens, I suspect global wealth tables would look rather different to what they do today.”

These excerpts have been selected from the chapter titled ‘Wealth – An Alternative Definition’ in my book ‘Life as a Jigsaw Puzzle’. And whilst my utopian views may be too impractical to ever come to fruition, I share them as food for thought in the hope that they will plant the seeds of change for a fairer, more loving world. ❤️