We just learned in the last week that just 85 people have the combined wealth of the bottom 50% (3.5 billion) people.
I agree with sellew - many of the mega-wealthy would rather buy their 50th vintage car, gold-plate their taps, fly by interior-designed private jet, etc than lift a finger to help the poorest realize their own opportunities. We still see millions dying of preventable diseases. If you looked at the spending behind FIYH's malaria-athon choice of charity, it's quite easy to save lives, but we in the west don't do it enough. Bill Gates is trying, as are a few others (e.g. eradication of polio) but for every virtuous philanthropist, there's the Koch Brothers or Rupert Murdoch.

Yeah, I think it's ultimately a question of having to agree to disagree.  I completely accept that I'm giving the film more of a pass than I otherwise would because it tells me what I want to hear.

However, I think it's too strong to say it's a failure of science fiction though, since I think science fiction can equally be about taking some aspect of our real world circumstances to its logical conclusion.  The argument is (on my reading) that our real life mega-wealthy of right now, today, simply don't fucking give a toss about anyone or anything (except protecting what they have and amassing more) and that point is made by describing a future society in which that characteristic is shared by everyone.  These characters may be completely "inhuman", but that's because the mega-wealthy are inhuman in precisely that sense, so the claim would go.  And it's underlining the injustice of that attitude by making it literally unnecessary in-universe.  (And, by that, further suggesting that the mega-wealthy of today could provide needed help at a negligible-to-them, effectively zero cost, and they, like everyone in Elysium, choose not to.)     

And I completely agree that that induces a kind of dramatic failure.  We the audience aren't (in general) psychopaths, utterly incapable of empathy for anyone who is Not Us.  But if indeed the film is sacrificing drama to make that political point, I think it's a vaguely bold move.  But, again, that's because it's playing to my prejudices.

Then again, we have real life examples of people doing just this (on a smaller scale) on a religious grounds. One of the worst person of modern time, mother Theresa had money and resources practically thrown at her to help her "angels". She withheld these resources from the children she was claiming to help. She believed in suffering.

If the motives of the Elysians were religious I would have bought it.

^

If ELYSIUM is trying to be some kind of satire, it's doing a poor job of it. If it's trying to be serious, it's doing a poor job of that, too.

Oh my god, Verhoeven's ELYSIUM.