How is it that there are 500 of billionaires in the world?

Question

yet people are still starving in the world. Sometimes I just don't understand with all the money and food in the world, there is still starvation.

Answer 1

Your question seems to presume one or both of two things.  One, that if the billionaires somehow hadn't made the money they did, it could have gone to feed starving people.  In fact if they had chosen not to make the money it would just never have existed. Or, two, that the billionaire's money could somehow be converted to food for the starving people.  In fact most of a billionaire's money is actually equity stock which would lose immense value if most of it were even converted to cash at one time, let alone food.  The problem is a shortage of food (once again, by definition), that's what needs to be fixed.

Answer 2

Poverty is a problem indeed. But, countries in Africa need a lot of things in order to reduce poverty. ie. education, health care etc. which they lack

Answer 3

It's really not a hard question to find an answer for.  There are just not that many wealthy--or even just comfortably well off people--who give a d**n about the less fortunate.  

People are starving in the world largely because there is a considerable degree of blindness among people of first world, wealthy nations.  I would wager that, in the U.S., for instance, when most think of the poor and hungry, they DON'T think of the poor and working class masses within their own nation, but those abroad.  That's easier, because it's easier to get away with merely hand-wringing and bemoaning the ill fortunes of those living overseas than to do anything about it.  As for the hungry people at home?  They are often invisible to the well-to-do.  The U.S. can't afford to publicize the widespread problem of hunger in its own ranks because that would muck with the celebrated ideals it loves to boast about.

Yes, it is hard to comprehend how there can be so many starving people when a handful of people have billions more than they'll ever need.  The reason is politics, for one, and cultural ethnocentrism, as well as American/Western exceptionalism, for another.  The mass meat industry is one culprit, though that will be an unpopular opinion for those people who view meat as a staple and a right rather than a luxury and a privilege.  The reality is that the majority of people in the world cannot afford meat, while people in Western nations eat meat on a daily basis, often at every meal.  And it is the cattle industry--Big Meat in general, but Big Beef especially--that is responsible for a huge percentage of environmental degradation--deforestation for grazing lands, for example.  Also, because of the amount of feed and water that are required to raise a single cow to the finishing stage (finishin refers to butchering cattle that has been fattened up in preparation for the slaughterhouse), a GREAT DEAL of land that could--and should--be used to grow food crops for people, is instead diverted to growing feed crops for cattle.  It is an extremely inefficient use of land and crops.  We could nearly, if not totally, eliminate world hunger if all the resources used to raise cattle were instead used to feed people.  

This is not an anti-meat screed, nor do I mean to imply that Big Beef is the sole cause of world hunger.  I do mean that it is the greatest culprit, for a number of reasons, though.  And It is simply a fact that the world would be better off if meat were considered a condiment and a luxury--something to be enjoyed periodically and in moderate amounts, rather than a God-given right that people consume in excess every single day.