It is Olympic time and as a useful comparison ...
How much does an Olympic gold medal cost?
With a minimum six grams of gold and a large chunk of silver, the answer is about £450.
Even an Olympic gold medal is not real gold.
Interestingly, this topic was first raised on the
PBK / post-PBK website and there a BK wrote that any child starving was their own fault, that they must have been criminals in their past life, and so therefore he was not interested in giving charity to such causes.
This the general opinion within the BK movement and why it can spend so much money on gold jewellery rather than genuine social upliftment or being concerned about child welfare? I remember it being against their "highest advice" to give to other genuine charities. Giving to charities, they claimed, karmically bound you to the other individuals which would hold your spiritual progress back.
The BK was against child welfare ...
or even survival ... on the grounds it would only encouraged them to breed or lead potentially vice ridden lives. They said the gold for the jewellery was not bought but came from jewellery that had been previous donated to the BKWSU.
Early, we discussed this practise where BKWSU leaders encouraged the poor to give over their gold to them.
In India, the poor have a habit of buying and given gold as they wealth, especially to their daughters, e.g. as dowry, in the same way as the gypsies do in the West. I was not surprised to discover the BKs targeting it.
It still costs to have gold melted down and remade into jewellery badges. I wonder which company was awarded the contract, if it was some BK's company, and if there were backhanders involved?