Sunday, January 21, 2018

Reuters — The World's Richest 1% Took Home 82% of Wealth Last Year, Oxfam Says

Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest 1%, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday.
As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor....
“The economic model is not working at all,” Oxfam report co-author, Iñigo Macías Aymar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The way this wealth is being distributed we are really worried, it’s being concentrated in fewer hands.”...

6 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

Tom posts this stuff, but he *goes to Davos* every year... in the MNE private jet.

Noah Way said...

"It found that 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017"

The poorest people have wealth?

Matt Franko said...

There they go again Noah....

Ryan Harris said...

What is particularly irritating about these accounts... the majority of the world's poor are farmers and their land almost certainly increased in value. But western economists...

Tom Hickey said...

The paradox is that most everyone is better off and standards of living are rising globally. But within countries inequality, the rate of inequality, and the rate of the rate are all increasing. Wealth (and power) are concentrating at the top nationally and globally.

So, the argument is that capitalism is making almost everyone better off, so what's the problem.

Inequality results in social unrest and political divisiveness. Nationalist populism is a reaction to neoliberal globalization, which is resulting in not only economic inequality but also greater asymmetries, power in particular.

Dialectical logic predicts this.

Ryan Harris said...
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