The world economic scene is one of extreme and worsening inequality, with a few experiencing great and increasing wealth while more than one billion people suffer intense deprivation and poverty.
 

• The richest 20% of the world's people get 86% of world income while the poorest 20% get only 1.3%.
• The ratio between rich and poor world per capita income, which is 70/1, is getting worse.  In 1950 it was 20/1.
• Half the world’s people have an average income under $2 per day.  For 1 billion people daily income is under $1..  Shirt makers in Bangladesh are paid 15c a day.
• Three people have as much wealth as the total annual income of the poorest 48 countries.  There are about 400 billionaires and they have as much wealth as half the world’s people.  Most of the world’s capital is owned by about 2% of the world’s people.
• Access to resources is more important than income.  The rich 20% of the world's people get about 80% of the world's resource production.  Their per capita consumption is 15-20 times that of the poorest half of the world's people.
• About 1 billion people do not get enough to eat.  More than 1 billion have to use dangerously  contaminated water.  More than 30,000 Third World children die every day because of deprivation of necessities like food and clean water.
• The Third World situation is getting worse.  In 1996 the United Nations Human Development Report stressed that the poorest one-third of the world's people are getting poorer.
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  In other words, the global economy is grossly unjust.  A  few of the world's people who are living in rich countries are taking most of the resources produced each year in the world, such as oil.  If this was not happening these people could not have anything like their affluent consumer lifestyles.  For example if world energy production was distributed evenly to all people we in rich countries would get only  1/5 of the amount we get  now.  We could not have so many cars, jet-alway holidays, video games,  imported goods, supermarket products, "nice" clothes etc if we were not getting far more than our fair share.  We can only have the high "living standards" we have because the global economy delivers most resource wealth to us while it seriously deprives most people in the world.

There is no possibility of all people ever rising to the "living standards" we have.  (For the detailed explanation see The Limits to Growth, and Third World Development.)  A small group of Third World rich and middle class people also have rich world living standards.

The main reasons for this extremely unsatisfactory global situation  are to do with the way the global economy works.  It is an economy which automatically and inevitably allocates almost all of the world's wealth to  richer people.  This easily shown.  The global economy is a market system and in a market things go not to those who need them  most but to those who offer t pay most for them.

 This is the main reason why there is huge amount of poverty and deprivation in the world.   Billions of people cannot get a fair share of the available resources because the rich few take them by being able to pay more.  More importantly, this is also the explanation for inappropriate development in the Third World.  In this economy people only invest in what will make most profit.  Therefore Third World productive capacity, especially land and labour, is mostly put into producing things to export to rich countries (and for use by local elites).  Therefore this economy inevitably results in development of the wrong things, that is, things that are not urgently  needed.  Their productive capacity becomes devoted to production for the rich,  Thus many regard conventional development as little more than a process of plunder. Third world people would be much better off if they could devote their land, labour talents and savings fully to producing for themselves the things they urgently need, rather than working for low wages in plantations and factories to produce exports in order to be able to purchase goods (imported from rich countries.)

In addition rich nations behave as brutal thugs, forcing poorer nations to accept policies and conditions which enable the rich to exploit their labour and resources.  For instance they insist on poor nations dropping subsidies and protection because the free market way is supposed to be the right way, while they pay enormous subsidies to their agricultural sectors.  They insist on the right of capital to go without restriction to wherever it wants to go,  but they rule out any notion of Third World labour having the freedom to move to the rich world.)  The World Bank's Structural Adjustment Packages force poor countries to accept conditions which are a bonanza for rich world corporations while devastating their economies and the living standards of their people.  Finally, rich nations frequently use military force or support murderous regimes in order to keep in place or install governments which enforce policies that enrich local elites and rich world corporations while depriving and oppressing their people.  (For a summary account see Imperialism; An Outline.)

All this can also be put in terms of the selfishness and greed that is central in  Western culture.  It is a consumer society.  Most people want to  buy and consume large amounts of goods, services and resources.  The extremely rich few and the corporations they own, and ordinary people are all are determined to increase their wealth as fast as they can.  Ordinary and poor people would live lavishly if they could. Just about everyone craves luxury and  expensive possessions and experiences.  Opulent buildings, e.g., parliament houses, the Sydney Opera House, are taken for granted.  Luxurious cars are taken for granted.  "Progress", "development" and the supreme goal of society (economic growth), are defined solely in terms of getting richer.

Western culture is competitive and individualistic.  Everyone strives  to b e one of the winners, to be able to take more than others.  There is no concept of cooperating to organise an economy in which all re cared for via modest levels of consumption and without anywhere near as much work, stress, insecurity, resource use and ecological destruction as there is now.

Since the 1970s we have entered the era of globalisation and this is now rapidly making inequality worse, because it involves the drastic elimination of many of he powers whereby government used to restrain and regulate corporations in order to assist and protect the people and the local economies.  Now the corporations have increasingly free access to all the resources, labour, markets etc that once were preserved for the benefit of ordinary people.  Globalisation is accelerating the impoverishment of the world's poor people.  Again note that one-third of of the world's people are getting poorer.  Meanwhile the rich are rapidly getting richer.  Even within the richest  countries there is polarisation, with the rich racing ahead.  Approximately 2% of the world's people now own most of its capital.

Clealrly we have an economy that does not work for all people.  It serves the rich few very well.  In fact probably much less than 10% of the world's people are benefiting much from the way he world economy works.  At least 3 billion  are very poor and over lone billion are extremely deprived.

But almost everyone proceeds as if they have no idea of how extremely unjust the global situation is.    Billions of people are severely deprived, while the few in rich countries have great affluence, enjoying lifestyles that are grossly unsustainable, consuming far more than their fair share of the world's resources, taking  many of them from poor countries through the "free market" trading and the investment by their corporations.
Yet no one in the rich countries seems to understand or care much about the injustice their high living standards is built on.
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Related articles:

Our Economic System; Why It Must Be Scrapped.
Economics; A Critical Summary (1 page.)
The Economy; A criical Summary (4 pages)
Third World Development, short and long accounts
Collected Documents; ECONOMICS
Collected Documents; THIRD WORLD
Collected Documents; GLOBALISATION

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The Simpler Way: Analyses of global problems (environment,
  limits to growth, Third World...)and the sustainable alternative
  society (...simpler lifestyles, self-sufficient and cooperative
  communities, and a new economy.)  Organised by Ted Trainer.       http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/TSW/