World’s Richest Now Own 11% Of Global Wealth – The Biggest Leap In Recent History, Says Report

Countercurrents | December 08, 2021

The world’s richest people got a whole lot richer during the COVID-19 crisis.

In 2021, billionaires saw the steepest increase in their share of wealth on record, according to The World Inequality Lab’s annual World Inequality Report.

The top 0.01% richest individuals — the 520,000 people who have at least $19 million — now hold 11% of the world’s wealth, up a full percentage point from 2020, the report found. Meanwhile, the share of global wealth owned by billionaires has grown from 1% in 1995 to 3% in 2021.

World inequality

Michael Robert’s Blog | December 08, 2021

The world has become more unequal in income and wealth in the last 40 years.  That’s according to the World Inequality Report 2022, available here.  Produced by the World Inequality Lab, run by Thomas Piketty and a group of over 100 analysts from around the world, the report has the most up-to-date and complete data on the various facets of inequality worldwide: global wealth, income, gender and ecological inequality.

The report shows how in 2021, “after three decades of trade and financial globalisation, global inequalities remain extremely pronounced … about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century.”  Although the World Inequality report found inequalities between nations had declined since the end of the cold war (mainly due to the rise in living standards in China), it said inequality had increased within most countries and had become more pronounced as a result of the global pandemic over the past two years.

On the Origins of Great Wealth

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INEQUALITY 

Gary Olson

Virtually everything was created at public expense and then gobbled up by enterprising opportunists like Gates.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in one of his short stories, “The very rich are very different than you and me”. Ernest Hemingway has a character in one his reply by saying “Yes, they have more money.” A more concise retort might be that the secret behind every great fortune is a great theft, to paraphrase Honore de Balzac.

There are 657 billionaires in the United States, whose combined wealth grew by more than $1.7 trillion in the year of the pandemic. Further, we know that the one-tenth of the 1% own more than than the bottom 90%. Where does this wealth originate?

Land Inequality Threatens Livelihood of 2.5 Bln: Report

INEQUALITY

Susan Chacko

Down To Earth | November 26, 2020

The top 10 per cent of the rural population captures 60 per cent of agricultural land value; the bottom half controls only 3 per cent. This land inequality continues to threaten the livelihoods of an estimated 2.5 billion people involved in smallholder agriculture, according to a new report from the Land Inequality Initiative.

Land inequality has been historically measured in terms of differences in land ownership. But it is much more complex and multi-dimensional, the report, released November 24, 2020, stated. Four approaches were used to look at land inequality:

New Zealand: Chocolate fish, red herrings and billionaires

Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement takes a look at New Zealand’s richest capitalist

Redline | July 15, 2020

The rich become that way because they work hard to provide the everyday things that our nation needs. So runs the story that underpins the economic system we live under. It’s something that is so taken for granted, it often goes uncommented upon. It seems as natural and obvious as sun in summer or chocolate fish tasting like chocolate rather than fish. Other times you will see the corporate media actively propagating this idea somewhere in the business section of your paper. By the way, that’s the bit you often skip over to get to the crossword at the back, in case you weren’t sure what that was. Overall, it feels like there’s not much to be said about it, right? Wrong.

‘Rich People Have Profited Enough’: New Poll Shows Two-Thirds of Americans Support Wealth Tax to Combat Inequality

by Julia Conley, staff writer

Common Dreams | February 27, 2020

A poll released Wednesday by TheHill/HarrisX found that 67% of Americans support a wealth tax to combat inequality. (Photo: AFP/Getty)

Support for a wealth tax to combat persistent inequality in the U.S. is growing, according to a new poll released Wednesday by TheHill/HarrisX which found that just over two-thirds of Americans favor a tax on the wealthiest households.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents—including majorities of Democrats and Independents—said there should be a wealth tax on billionaires, as Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have proposed.

A clear majority of Democrats, 85%, backed the proposal, along with 66% of independent voters. Nearly half of Republican respondents—47%—said they would support a wealth tax in the poll, which was conducted between February 23 and 24 among more than 1,000 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3%.

UN: Rising worldwide income inequality produces political turmoil

by Mark Gruenberg

People’s World | February 24, 2020

Source: Inequality in a Rapidly Changing World

NEW YORK—Income inequality is increasing worldwide and within specific nations, and that’s producing political turmoil, too, a recent United Nations report says.

“Rising inequality creates discontent, political dysfunction and can lead to violent conflict,” the report warns, in a statement buried deep in its 218 pages.

But the same forces that produce the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us can be harnessed, by governments and by international cooperation, to start to close the chasm, UN Secretary-General António Guterres adds. But only if they want to, he notes. So far, they don’t, he warns.

Richest 1% own more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people, says report

 Countercurrents | January 20, 2020

A super-rich one percent of the world’s population has accumulated twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, said a new report by Oxfam, a global charity. The report has been released on January 20, 2020 on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The gap between the filthy rich and the rest of humanity has reached grotesque proportions, according to the report.

The report, Time to Care, focuses on the largely unpaid care work many women and girls take upon themselves.

Tales of a Queen’s Christmas and Christmas Tree workers

A Journal of People report

The Queen of UK might spend Christmas at Sandringham, but she still puts on a spectacular festive display at Windsor Castle each December.

The royal family started retreating to their Norfolk estate in the late 1980s. But before to that the royal family used to spend Christmases at the historic royal venue. The then Princess Elizabeth, and her younger sister Princess Margaret, would even perform pantomimes for the rest of the family.

Nevertheless, the castle is now transformed with regal decorations to celebrate the festive season. The decoration is always an impressive display.

On the royal family’s social media account, they have shared an insight into the striking decorations as they all come together.

Social Inequality is Generating Conflict in Latin America: UNDP

teleSUR | December 09, 2019

A woman gestures as members of the security forces disperse a protest against Chile’s government in Santiago, Chile December 8, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Throughout 2019, the populations of Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Haiti have taken part in massive public demonstrations, which have been strongly repressed, causing dozens of deaths and hundreds of detainees and wounded.

The United Nations Development Program ( UNDP ) warned on Monday that inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean can cause greater social crises, as evident by the popular protests in several countries in the region.