Heroes Not Zombies

You’re familiar with this, aren’t you? It shows how the top 1% of the population have increased their share of wealth fantastically since 2003 while the 99% (that’s probably you and me!) have seen their income stay the same or decline over the same period.

However, check out this interesting graph from an article in The Atlantic this week.

It shows, amazingly, that within that top 1%, 99% of them have NOT increased their wealth, but 1% of them have enormously increased their wealth. That means the only ones to gain in this period of austerity are the top 0.01% of society and they have MASSIVELY increased their share. This unprecedented centralisation of wealth sucks the life blood out of society. This small elite hoards the world’s wealth to themselves. And if we can say anything about healthy economies, they need circulation and movement. Remember the credit crunch? What happened? The money stopped circulating.

There are a mass of other problems which are linked to huge socio-economic inequality. Have a look here if you’re unfamiliar with the work of Prof Wilkinson.

Hamish Mcrae, writing in the Independent, reflects on this finding. He says

Once the majority of people in a democracy feel it is not working to their advantage, they will seek a remedy.

He then goes on to say that taxing the rich won’t work, and that we can only hope they will learn to “change their ways”. Really? That’s your big solution, Hamish? Karl Marx said

Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery at the opposite pole.

Bloomberg Business Week published an article noting the reemergence of Marxist economics last June. And Pope Francis said

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “Thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.

and goes on

While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. The imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation…. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.

What does he suggest?

I exhort you to a generous solidarity and to the return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favors human beings.

It’s a long time since Schumacher published “Small is Beautiful” but maybe we are beginning to see a clamour for the development of economics, politics, science and humanities which enrich not just the 0.01%, but the 99.99% too.

Any ideas?