There's a reason celebs and rich folk have several homes around the world, and it's not always to save on hotel bills

That study should be repressed any moment now.

Study finds that the best way to survive increases in extreme weather events have the best legal representation is to be rich

Study finds that the best way to survive increases in extreme weather events live the healthiest lifestyle is to be rich

Study finds that the best way to survive increases in extreme weather events participate the most in our democracy is to be rich

Poor most affected.

From early on, I figured out that the way to make it in this world was to be rich. I then expended a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears to attain that goal. It wasn't easy; many nights I'd be working at a second or third job while my friends partied. But it was worth it in the end.

What's your excuse?

WhippingBoy: From early on, I figured out that the way to make it in this world was to be rich. I then expended a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears to attain that goal. It wasn't easy; many nights I'd be working at a second or third job while my friends partied. But it was worth it in the end.

What's your excuse?



Romney and his sons worked real hard to get where they are, too. I'm sure many of them even had second or third jobs at one point as well.

The Best Defense Against Extreme Weather: Live in a Rich Country

Subby fail.

Well, duh!

There's a reason why trailer parks are built in the paths of tornados, situated on flood plains, or just plain built with ticky-tacky. That's all the poor people can afford in the way of housing and land.

Rich people own all of the high ground. Occasional exceptions, such the slums of Rio de Janeiro, point towards special local circumstances, such as great local beaches or a tendancy of the hills to collapse in massive killer mudslides. But even where landslides are an annual event, the rich STILL take to the high ground. The breezes blow away the smog and mosquitos.

How many celebrities can you think of who actually died when their houses slid off of the cliff in Malibu or the sandunes of LA? How many? Not a lot. They are never there in the rainy season.

Besides, there's so much money floating around in the kind of places where multi-million dollar mansions are build on sand that the real rich can afford to live somewhere better than the actors, jocks and TV news readers, or mere rich. Like an ex-urban estate in the Rockies which is accessible only by small aircraft or helicopter. Or a yacht two thousand miles away.

Rich people are paid to take risks--that rich people never take. They hire people to take risks for them. This is pretty much the Mr. Punch's Secret of great wealth. Hire somebody to make you rich, somebody to keep you rich, and somebody to sue or (legally) kill anybody who gets in your way. Take no risks. They are for poor people. For you, there are profits to be made from taking risks with other people's money and lives.

Globally there are about 900 million to a 1 billion people living on less than $2 a day. These people spend 80% or more of their precarious incomes on food. If the price of rich is $1 a pound and rises to $2 a pound, even temporarily, there's not much they can do except starve or die in riots against price increases. To be rich enough to simply eat is, for these people, a largely unrealizable dream, no matter how hard they work, no matter how wise their tiny expenditures and investments.

These are the people most vulnerable to climate change because they have nothing, no body fat to live on, no surplus to save for a rainy day (although many of them contrive to set a little aside by entrusting small amounts of money to trusted individuals who act as bankers to the super-poor--often they have to spread their pittance around because the "bankers" are nearly as poor as their friends and family and can go bust very easily.

As the article notes, Amartya Sen, a big name in global development economics, is right when he points out that what the poor need is more money. They need to rise into the global middle classes, which are precarious but can survive much longer under much bigger economic, environmental and political blows. A few thousand a year is enough to make an individual "middle class" by global standards.

And yet we have abundant supplies of "poor" people in the richest countries. They may be infinitely better off than the totally destitute that some "conservative" demagogues would have you believe are the only real poor, but they too live hand to mouth without all the "necessities" of life, even when those necessities are defined very strictly as things like food, medicine, health care, work, a modest education, etc.

Some people are born to houses on the high ground, and others are born on 45 degree slope, with banana peels and slippery mud under their feet. And no matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. The lack of a nail and the shoe is lost, as Ben Franklin put it. Many of these people are adding to their poverty but have no recourse. They have to denude their hills of firewood or die. And once the hills are bear, the mudslides come and destroy the paltry resources they had. No help for it. And very often, precious little help from the few of us born to comfort, idleness and peace.

Timendainum: According to the story you are all rich. When they were comparing to poor people, they meant REAL poor people. Like those in Haiti. You know, the ones who cannot get clean water, sanitation or ample food.

Not you, the poor person reading and posting on Fark on your new iPod.

Yo dude, I'm reading this on my vintage eMac with an out of date browser.

Everything is more retro and gritty this way.

Price of rice, not "rich". I'm making lots of typos today, in small words it seems.

If the poor ate the rich, there'd be no problem. There'd still be thieves, bullies and fools, but they'd not know their business so well as to be much trouble. It takes a very skillfull thief to make billions, and to do it all legally, albeit not morally.

brantgoose: Price of rice, not "rich". I'm making lots of typos today, in small words it seems.

For a minute there I thought they were eating the rich in those countries.

Rice makes more sense. It doesn't run when you try to catch it.