Who will SA’s Robin Hood be?

Now here is something an Economic Freedom Fighter like Julius Malema would love – the Robiin Hood Index*! In layman words, the Robin Hood Index is the proportion of money needed to be transferred from the rich to the poor to achieve equality (in a country).

The bad news, for poor old Julius, is that there are either not enough billionaires in South Africa to donate to the running of the country, or – that the government is just spending (or wasting) money too fast.

In fact, the daily running cost of South Africa is $333.5 million (approximately R3.98 billion). The country’s richest man, Johann Rupert, would not be able to keep the country running for one month before he is completely bankrupt – and presumably the country as well.

As it is, there are only 2,125 billionaires in the world. To get the bigger picture, have a look at this awesome infographic put together by Betway. It analysing the journeys of the world’s 100 richest individuals. It shows who won big with their start-up and made their first billion the fastest, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? It also tells the story of some hard grafters that took a lifetime to achieve their billionaire status.

* Known as the one of the simplest measures of inequality used in econometrics, the Robin Hood Index is equal to the portion of the total community income that would have to be redistributed (taken from the richer half of the population and given to the poorer half) for the society to live in perfect equality.