The 1% and their rabid supporters, the wannabes, the managers that do their bidding, will not relinquish their power gently. Sharpen your pitchforks people, there won’t be another way.
Suzanne Moore
Jan 19, 2015
Who will look after the super-rich and think about their needs? It’s not easy for them: the 1% of the world’s population who by next year will own more global wealth than the 99%. Private security costs a fortune, and with the world becoming an increasingly unequal place a certain instability increases. It could be dangerous!
Very smartly, Oxfam International is raising such questions at the World Economic Forum at Davos, where the global elite gather to talk of big ideas and big money. Oxfam executive director, Winnie Byanyima, is arguing that this increasing concentration of wealth since the recession is “bad for growth and bad for governance”. What’s more, inequality is bad not just for the poor, but for the rich too. That’s why we have the likes of the IMF’s Christine Lagarde kicking off with warnings about rising inequality. Visceral inequality from foodbanks to empty luxury flats is still seen as somehow being in the eye of the beholder by the right – a narrative in which poverty is seen as an innate moral failure of the poor themselves has taken hold. This in turn sustains the idea that rich people deserve their incredible riches. Most wealth, though, is not earned: huge assets, often inherited, simply get bigger not because the individuals who own them are super talented, but because structures are in place to ensure this happens.
Full article:
Inequality isn’t inevitable, it’s engineered. That’s how the 1% have taken over | Suzanne Moore | Comment is free | theguardian.com.
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