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by Michael Savage
April 07,
2018
from
TheGuardian Website
Italian
version
Gold bars are displayed at
South
Africa's Rand Refinery in Germiston.
Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
World
leaders urged to act
as anger over
inequality
reaches a
'tipping point'...
'Sustainable
Development' a.k.a. 'Technocracy,' promotes
increasing income equality while proclaiming that it
will reduce poverty.
Taking
resources out of the hands of citizens, declining
property rights and public-private partnerships only
have one outcome:
the elite
accumulate everything...
Source
Richest 1% on target
to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030
The
world's richest 1% are on course to
control as much as two-thirds of the world's wealth by 2030,
according to a shocking analysis that has lead to a cross-party call
for action.
World leaders are being warned that the continued accumulation of
wealth at the top will fuel growing distrust and anger over the
coming decade unless action is taken to restore the balance.
An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library
suggests that if trends seen since
the 2008 financial crash were to
continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world's wealth by
2030.
Even taking the financial
crash into account, and measuring their assets over a longer period,
they would still hold more than half of all wealth.
Since 2008, the wealth of the richest 1% has been growing at an
average of 6% a year - much faster than the 3% growth in wealth of
the remaining 99% of the world's population.
Should that continue, the
top 1% would hold wealth equating to $305tn (£216.5tn) - up from
$140tn today.
Analysts suggest wealth has become concentrated at the top because
of
recent income inequality, higher
rates of saving among the wealthy, and the accumulation of assets.
The wealthy also invested a large amount of equity in businesses,
stocks and other financial assets, which have handed them
disproportionate benefits.
New polling by
Opinium suggests that voters
perceive a major problem with the influence exerted by the very
wealthy.
Asked to select a group
that would have the most power in 2030, most (34%) said the
super-rich, while 28% opted for national governments.
In a sign of falling
levels of trust, those surveyed said they feared the consequences of
wealth inequality would be rising levels of corruption (41%) or the,
"super-rich enjoying
unfair influence on government policy" (43%).
The research was
commissioned by Liam Byrne, the former Labour cabinet
minister, as part of a gathering of MPs, academics, business
leaders, trade unions and civil society leaders focused on
addressing the problem.
Actor
Michael Sheen, who has opted to
scale back his Hollywood career to campaign against high-interest
credit providers, was among those supporting the calls.
Actor Michael Sheen,
who is campaigning against high-interest lenders,
supports the calls to rebalance global inequality.
Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian
The hope is to
create pressure for global action when leaders of
the G20 group of nations gather for
a
summit in Buenos Aires in November (2018).
Byrne, who
organized the first
OECD global parliamentary
conference on inclusive growth, said he believed global inequality,
"was now at a
tipping point".
"If we don't
take steps to rewrite the rules of how our economies work, then
we condemn ourselves to a future that remains unequal for good,"
he said.
"That's morally
bad, and economically disastrous, risking a new explosion in
instability, corruption and poverty."
In a sign of the
concern about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of so few, the
move has gained support from across the political divide.
George Freeman,
the Tory MP and former head of the prime minister's policy board,
said:
"While mankind
has never seen such income inequality, it is also true that
mankind has never experienced such rapid increases in living
standards.
Around the
world billions of people are being lifted out of poverty at a
pace never seen before. But the extraordinary concentration of
global wealth today - fuelled by the pace of technological
innovation and globalization - poses serious challenges.
If the system
of capitalist liberal democracy which has triumphed in the west
is to pass the big test of globalization - and the assault from
radical Islam as well as its own internal pressures from
post-crash austerity - we need some new thinking on ways to
widen opportunity, share ownership and philanthropy. Fast..."
Demands for action
from the group include,
Danny Dorling,
professor of geography at the University of Oxford, said the
scenario in which the super-rich accumulated even more wealth by
2030 was a realistic one.
"Even if the
income of the wealthiest people in the world stops rising
dramatically in the future, their wealth will still grow for
some time," he said.
"The last peak
of income inequality was in 1913. We are near that again, but
even if we reduce inequality now it will continue to grow for
one to two more decades."
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