The Rich List

Gina Rinehart is rich. Warren Buffet is rich. Bill Gates is rich. But what about you? Are you rich?

Most us of never think of ourselves as rich, because we know people who are richer than us. We know there are people who are poorer, too, but we usually don't know them, we just know about them.

Try this website

www.globalrichlist.com 

where you can enter your income, and it tells you where you are on the scale of the world's richest to poorest people.

I've invited people to do this in this week's homily, because the gospel is from Luke 16, where the unnamed rich man goes to hell simply for being rich, when the poor man Lazarus was at his gate and he did nothing to help him. On a global scale you and I are both pretty rich (and if you're like me and don't have a full wage but live subsidised by family / church / government, try calculating the wage it would cost to pay for your lifestyle outright. The average Australian full time wage is approx $75,000, and I reckon that when I factor in all the freebies (like a house) of being a priest that I'd be close to that. The website above gives some perspective for how I should hear Jesus' challenge to the rich in the gospel.

Comments

  1. Veronica30 September 2016 at 16:02

    Thanks for a thought-provoking homily Jim. You got me reflecting on the 'scraps' I leave for my refugee brothers and sisters- it's time I invite the family to the table for a regular meal! So I've researched a couple of Australian charities providing support to refugees, but want to make sure that what I'm serving isn't just fast food, rather a meal which has optimal benefit for the family.

    The UN Refugee Agency for UNHCR gives 86% of it's donations to humanitarian projects with 7% going to Administration costs and 7% to fundraising. Does anyone know of a charity supporting refugees that has a higher percentage of direct support going to humanitarian projects than this figure? If you do please advise prior to 5 October 2016 as I'd like to begin preparing the table asap.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fr Jim McKeon12 October 2016 at 04:25

    That 14% cost is the slimmest margin I've seen. Caritas is pretty good too, but that might be better. The fact that we don't see much advertising for UNHCR is a good sign.

    ReplyDelete

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