here are more millionaires in the world than the number of people in Toronto and Chicago combined. And their numbers are increasing as fast as the population of both cities.

Estimates suggest the number has topped 7 million. A report by Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini shows that last year’s tech-stock meltdown didn’t slow the growth of millionaires significantly. Between 1999 and 2000 their numbers went from 7 million to 7.2 million globally.

When Forbes magazine started publishing its list of America’s 400 wealthiest families in 1982, the guy on the bottom had a net worth of $90 million. Now, the cutoff point is approaching $1 billion. Worldwide, there are some 400 billionaires.

What’s a million anymore? Millionaires now pop up all over. They are almost, shall we say, a dime a dozen: mediocre professional athletes, CEOs, newly-graduated fresh-faced techies, rappers, Internet entrepreneurs, entertainers, inheritors, and those who earn it the traditional hard-life way, plowing through the plethora of lotteries and other get-rich-quick schemes.

Fat cats are purring in perfect contentment from one continent to the other--often within earshot of the pleading poor.

When I was in school I figured to be a millionaire . . . over the length of my lifetime, that is. If only I could get this dream job that pays $25,000 per year and hold it for 40 years I’d be, uh, rich.

To a graduate in 1978, $25,000 seemed like a lot of money. My first pay raise took my earnings to $8,300, and I was working 60 hours a week. Now that I am working a lot less and making a lot more, some people figure I am rich.

Of course, they ignore the beat-up old minivan that is the telltale sign of a parent ravaged by the expense of kids at college. They dismiss the cost of raising a child, which, according to USA Today, now cites $241,770 from birth to age 17. And they discount the fact that after 22 years of toil I still haven’t accumulated my first million.

Still, there is some truth to the assessment. I am rich, compared to many of the church members and hordes of people I encounter every day. Sitting beside me on the subway or in the pew are far too many people living in abject poverty, scraping by on pitiful sums.

In 1979, the income of the richest 20 per cent of the American population was nine times that of the poorest 20 per cent. By 1997 it was 15 times higher. The poor might have gotten richer, but the rich had moved the bar even higher. The gap between rich and poor is widening substantially.

Jesus predicted this, of course, when He told the disciples that they’d always have the poor to tend to. Christianity’s mission has always been to provide for the poor. And our individual commission is still to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless.

The temptation is to put the onus for the poor on the backs of the rich. Leave it to Bill Gates; he’s rich, he can’t spend all his money so he should give it away, some say.

Well, seems like the world’s richest man is doing his part. He has given away about $21 billion, and counting. Other fat cats are feeding the hungry, funding vital health research, building hospitals. Ted Turner gave $1 billion to the United Nations and scolded other rich folks to be more charitable.

A young rich guy, forerunner of the dot.com hotshots today, wanted more than his money could provide. He wanted eternal life.

“Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven’” (Mark 10:21, NIV).

Note, this is not a rebuke, as we’re oft times prone to make it. It is clear counsel from a loving master. The rich young man was asked to give up a lot because he had a lot. You and I have to give up considerably less, but if we cling to any portion of what others desperately need, we lose out on so much.

It is more blessed to give.

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Royson James is urban affairs columnist for the Toronto Star. He is also an elder and youth worker at the Toronto West Seventh-day Adventist Church.