Jan 22: update

I am taking Spanish classes in Cuenca.  I have gotten into a routine which doesn't make for very interesting posts. 

Yesterday I spent several hours with an American couple who are in process of becoming Ecuadoran citizens.  They are really into banking flight miles via credit cards.  They flew around the world on flight miles for a trip that would cost close to $5k each! The couple managed to amass 3 million miles in two years! I had a hard time understanding how they did it other than they spend a lot of time   working on it and they are pretty smart.  They described it as entertainment like people who enjoy video games.

In other news, the annual world wealth inequality report was just released by Credit Suisse for 2013. In the report,  half of the world's population controls less than 1% of the world's wealth.  The top 10% of the world's population controls more than 86% of the world's wealth. The top 1% of the world's population controls almost half of the world's wealth. There are just 85 people who have as much wealth as half of the world's population (or 3.5 billion people)!  Then I read a recently issued Davos report that says climate change is strongly correlated with wealth inequality.  It makes sense if you consider 50% of the world's population is struggling to survive, while others are living in over abundant affluence (eg inefficiently and unsustainably utilizing the world's resources).