Joys of making $2 a day in world of billionaires

It says much about our time when we are more worried about billionaires than about the poor.

The obsession with those with billions in good times is understandable enough. Now it's their misfortune that dominates the headlines: Las Vegas mogul Sheldon Adelson and investor Carl Icahn seeing their net worth drop, Russian oligarchs falling on hard times, Indian tycoons losing a bundle in stocks.

We hear less about the so-called bottom 1.4 billion. That's the number of people estimated to live in extreme poverty, which since 1990 has generally been defined as $1 a day or less.