Yes, you read that right. Eight men, only eight, own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world. I knew the top one percent owned a significant portion of all the wealth in the world, but when I came across this article from Refinery29, I was reminded of the absurdity and dysfunctional aspect of wealth distribution in the world. While economies all over the world have grown and the amount of wealth has grown with them, the growth for the top 1% has been 182 times greater than that of the poorest 10%, resulting in a massive wealth gap between the poorest and the richest. As the Oxfam reports, which is the source of this information, this extreme economic inequality gap has many negative consequences for the rest of the 99%.
One of the striking aspects of the report is that these people that own as much wealth as half the world are all men. The Oxfam report credits the lack of women to the fact that women all over the world earn less than men for the same work, their jobs are usually the lowest paying and most insecure, privatization of public services like health care which often results in costs rising, women being responsible for the majority of unpaid work, gender inequality, lack of unions and protections for workers, lack of opportunity leaving women with a 27% lower chance of having a job and sexism in the workplace that hinder women from receiving promotions and pay raises.
The report also points to this inequality as a destabilizer of societies, since the economic inequality in society has become so extreme that people aren’t going to accept it anymore. The feelings of injustice and the general anger over how society is set up has lead to a strong desire for change and someone to blame. These feelings are what the pro-Brexit politicians and Donald Trump tapped into and is also responsible for the increased racism and hatred for establishment media and politicians. And as Obama said “A world where 1% of humanity controls as much wealth as the bottom 99% will never be stable” because that is a reality that only works for the 1% and eventually the remaining 99% are going to have had enough.
The seven most significant reasons for economic inequality according to the report are:
- Corporations, working for those at the top
- Squeezing workers and producers
- Dodging tax
- Super-charged shareholder capitalism
- Crony capitalism
- The role of the super-rich in the inequality crisis
- Avoiding tax, buying politics
The people who are really hurting because of this inequality are the workers all over the world who work under horrible conditions for hardly any pay at all. Despite world leaders, banks and other powerful players promising again and again to reduce the wealth gap, nothing ever seems to happen. The continued repression of workers’ voices and the strong opposition to the creation of unions from the top 1% keeps the rest of the world from having their voices heard, is hurting people particularly outside of Europe and the U.S. Many large European and American companies abuse their economic power, for example in the way that HM and Gap pay the women that sew their clothes unacceptably low wages and treat them horribly. The world being run the way it is now isn’t sustainable and is holding us back since it keeps people in poverty.
The fact that eight men own as much wealth as half the world and that 1% of the world owns more wealth than the rest 99% is unacceptable and unsustainable. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of society, and more work needs to be done by world leaders to fight this inequality. The Oxfam report calls for world leaders to start listening to the 99% and stop letting rich donors and lobbyist run the world. They also say that there needs to be a reevaluation of the idea that economies “work fine by themselves” since they obviously only work for the 1%. Eight men should not own as much wealth as half the world.
