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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Top 1% Now Own Over Half of the World’s Wealth
Oxfams Crystal Ball Confirmed: The Top 1% Now Own Over Half of the Worlds WealthNick Galasso
Common Dreams
Credit Suisses findings are in line with Oxfams prediction that global wealth inequality is only becoming greater. Last January, we predicted that the richest 1 percent would capture more than half of all household wealth by 2016. It looks like our prediction was right, but that we were too conservative, since it has happened a year early. Alas, our forecast was confirmed, but its nothing to celebrate.
In this respect, the real challenge is how average people can take back political power from wealthy elites who have the resources to rig the economic game in their favor. The rigging is evident in the ways elites are able to undermine democracy and equal representation by infusing huge amounts of cash into the political process. Its also clear in the influence elites use to capture the marketplace of ideas, perpetuating myths like trickle-down policies helping the poor and austerity measures are responsible both which have been consistently disproven.
Whats encouraging is that citizens from rich and poor countries are pushing back. There seems to be a global zeitgeist that capitalism has descended from being about competition and innovation to monopoly and corporatism. The latter are responsible for the massive inequalities we are grappling with today, especially the unfathomable concentration of the worlds wealth among an incredibly small number of people. The Credit Suisse figures empower citizens to hold governments to account for todays inequalities with the cold, hard data to back up the injustices of poverty and power we see every day.
Rex
(65,616 posts)But hey, this is what we wanted right? That 'greed is good' garbage from the 80s is really paying off! Yeah greed!
portlander23
(2,078 posts)We've been here before at various points in history and we've bounced back. Without Occupy and a general awareness of the problem, it's unlikely we'd have a candidate Sanders and unlikely we'd have an election season where even Republicans felt as though they had to say something about inequality, even if it's just to refute that it's a problem.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)anything like the 'murkan 24/7/365 propaganda machine. Goebbels or Stalin could not have begun to imagine the sophistication of modern media mind-control techniques developed by the corporate reichwing. They would stand in mute awe. This time they just might win, and it may take planetary catastrophe - which IS inevitably coming - to topple them.
And speaking of Goebbels, let me quote that "distinguished" founder of the modern Republican party:
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)The rest of us are still alive. And that is not in their long-range plan.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,368 posts)A boat like that runs well in excess of twenty million dollars.
Nice, huh?
That is something the average person rarely gets to even look at, much less board, much less sail on her, .......
(184' (56 meters) Perini Navi "Riela")
DJ13
(23,671 posts)More of the same please!
Initech
(100,068 posts)And I'm surprised this isn't on the front page.