Nomi Prins: A World That Is the Property of the 1%
Oxfam reported in January of this year that the wealth of
eight men was equal to that of half the people on this planet in 2017. And an Oxfam report a year earlier had 62 billionaires owning
half the planet’s wealth. Imagine that: 62 to eight in a single year...As we head into 2019,
leaving the chaos of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when
it comes to the state of Main Street, not just here but across the planet. If
the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are
leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of
office in such a sweeping fashion?
One obvious answer:
the post-Great Recession economic “recovery” was largely reserved for the few
who could participate in the rising financial markets of those years, not the
majority who continued to work longer hours, sometimes at multiple jobs, to
stay afloat. In other words, the good times have left out so many people, like
those struggling to keep even a few hundred dollars in their bank accounts to cover an
emergency or the 80% of American workers who live paycheck to paycheck.
In today's global
economy, financial security is increasingly the property of the 1%. No
surprise, then, that, as a sense of economic instability continued to grow over
the past decade, angst turned to anger, a transition that - from the U.S. to
the Philippines, Hungary to Brazil, Poland to Mexico - has provoked a plethora
of voter upheavals. In the process, a 1930s-style brew of rising nationalism
and blaming the “other” - whether that other was an immigrant, a religious
group, a country, or the rest of the world - emerged… read more:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176507/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_a_world_that_is_the_property_of_the_1%25/#more
See also:
Posts on Piketty's work on inequality
