The Survival of the Richest: The Real Wall. By NOMI PRINS
In January, as the
billionaire summit in Davos was about to be held, Oxfam summed our world:
'Billionaire fortunes increased by 12% last year-or $2.5 billion a day-while the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth decline by 11%... the number of billionaires has nearly doubled since the financial crisis, yet wealthy individuals and corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades, thanks to the new tax law championed by Trump.'
Like a gilded coating that makes the dullest things glitter, today’s thin veneer of political populism covers a grotesque underbelly of growing inequality that’s hiding in plain sight. And this phenomenon of ever more concentrated wealth and power has both Newtonian and Darwinian components to it. In terms of Newton’s first law of motion: those in power will remain in power unless acted upon by an external force. Those who are wealthy will only gain in wealth as long as nothing deflects them from their present course. As for Darwin, in the world of financial evolution, those with wealth or power will do what’s in their best interest to protect that wealth, even if it’s in no one else’s interest at all.
'Billionaire fortunes increased by 12% last year-or $2.5 billion a day-while the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth decline by 11%... the number of billionaires has nearly doubled since the financial crisis, yet wealthy individuals and corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades, thanks to the new tax law championed by Trump.'
Like a gilded coating that makes the dullest things glitter, today’s thin veneer of political populism covers a grotesque underbelly of growing inequality that’s hiding in plain sight. And this phenomenon of ever more concentrated wealth and power has both Newtonian and Darwinian components to it. In terms of Newton’s first law of motion: those in power will remain in power unless acted upon by an external force. Those who are wealthy will only gain in wealth as long as nothing deflects them from their present course. As for Darwin, in the world of financial evolution, those with wealth or power will do what’s in their best interest to protect that wealth, even if it’s in no one else’s interest at all.
In George Orwell’s
iconic 1945 novel, Animal Farm, the pigs who gain control in a
rebellion against a human farmer eventually impose a dictatorship on the other
animals on the basis of a single
commandment: “All animals are equal, but some animals are
more equal than others.” In terms of the American republic, the modern
equivalent would be: “All citizens are equal, but the wealthy are so much more
equal than anyone else (and plan to remain that way).” Certainly, inequality
is the economic great wall between those with power and those without it. As the animals of
Orwell’s farm grew ever less equal, so in the present moment in a country that
still claims equal opportunity for its citizens, one in which three Americans now have as much wealth as the bottom
half of society (160 million people), you could certainly say that we live in
an increasingly Orwellian society.
Or perhaps an increasingly Twainian one. After all, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote a classic 1873 novel that put an unforgettable label on their moment and could do the same for ours. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today depicted the greed and political corruption of post-Civil War America. Its title caught the spirit of what proved to be a long moment when the uber-rich came to dominate Washington and the rest of America... read more:
Or perhaps an increasingly Twainian one. After all, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote a classic 1873 novel that put an unforgettable label on their moment and could do the same for ours. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today depicted the greed and political corruption of post-Civil War America. Its title caught the spirit of what proved to be a long moment when the uber-rich came to dominate Washington and the rest of America... read more:
