"The 100 richest people in the world earned enough last year to end extreme poverty suffered by the poorest on the planet four times over..."

"Extreme wealth was 'economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive,' the report said."

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"Study says homeless facilities may increase the value of nearby property."

May... meaning it probably increases the value of the property over there where we'd like to site the facility but not over here where I live.

The study, released in 2008, compared home sale prices before and after the development of Project H.O.M.E. housing facilities and controlled for many other factors that could affect home values, said [Kevin] Gillen, an economist and senior research consultant at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania....

"These properties were overwhelmingly in distressed neighborhoods. If you were to do the same thing in affluent neighborhoods, it may not bring the same result. But given the choice living next door to a well-maintained homeless facility and a vacant abandoned building, you’ll take the homeless facility," he said.

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"We have done everything possible to make the presidency less venerated."

Says José Mujica, the president of Uruguay, who lives "a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all... never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor." That leaves him with $800 a moth.

Quoting the Roman court-philosopher Seneca, Mr. Mujica said, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.”...

Before Mr. Mujica became a gardener of chrysanthemums, he was a leader of the Tupamaros, the urban guerrilla group that drew inspiration from the Cuban revolution, carrying out armed bank robberies and kidnappings on Montevideo’s streets....

He spent 14 years in prison, including more than a decade in solitary confinement, often in a hole in the ground. During that time, he would go more than a year without bathing, and his companions, he said, were a tiny frog and rats with whom he shared crumbs of bread....

Mr. Mujica rarely speaks about his time in prison. Seated at a table in his garden, sipping his mate, he said it gave him time to reflect. “I learned that one can always start again,” he said.

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