The richest 10 percent of the world's population controls 52 percent of the wealth produced on the planet while the poorest half share only 8,5 percent. An imbalance, together with others no less sensational (the imbalance of incomes to the detriment of women, for example), which hasn't changed much since the end of the nineteenth century, at the apogee of Western imperialism, but which now threatens to widen further , when they come home to roost the nodes of the pandemic.
“In 2020, the year of the pandemic, the wealth of the richest it grew by 3.600 trillion dollars, an amount equal to that spent by governments around the world to deal with the contagion”. If the trend continues at these rates, in 2070 5,2 million super-rich they will hold the same wealth as 70% of the world's population. And it could succeed Marx's prophecy: the revolution of the proletarians into which the former middle class will have converged. To avoid this, all we have left is the taxman, as long as it is at the service of the environment and other noble causes, starting with education.
These theses are supported by the report on inequality presented on 6 December by WIL (World Inequality Lab), the result of the research of a hundred economists who, with cyclopean work, have reconstructed income map, including the effective purchasing power, throughout the planet starting from 1820. An enterprise which, while supported by a rigorous analysis, arises from an ideological assumption: inequality is not the result of geography or the different levels of development, but the result of political choices as already claimed by Thomas Piketty, the author of the best seller "Capital in the XNUMXst century" who is part of the team of French economists (Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman) who created this hymn-manifesto to the need for a state strong, capable of relaunching a fiscal policy under the banner of progressive revenues and incentives for "green" development. A strong change of course compared to the "mantra" of the tax cut that the world of politics talks about (often inappropriately).
“It's time for revive the tax debate – says Lucas Chancel – Today more relevant than ever in times of pandemic. The contagion has undoubtedly accelerated the concentration of wealth in favor of billionaires and accentuated the state of poverty in which many emerging countries find themselves. In rich countries, however, the public intervention machine worked but at the price of a sharp increase in public debt. And who will pay for it? The young, those who have already paid the highest price? Will we choose to let inflation run? Or it will precede the cancellation of the debt”. Historical and sociological analysis, therefore, is at the basis of a left-wing fiscal manifesto, with a strong ecological imprint.
"With a anti-pollution supplement for those who profit from coal-mining activities – adds the economist – a progressive tax on income could make it possible to collect from multibillionaires 1,5-2% of GDP world, a figure sufficient to achieve the objectives of the Paris agreement on climate”. A utopia? The 15% tax on multinationals approved by the OECD is a first step, almost unthinkable just a few years ago. The prospect of new balances is not entirely far-fetched.
In these two centuries, moreover, the relationships have not remained unchanged. A phase of sharp increase in inequality between 1820 and 1910 was followed by a season of income reconciliation, which was interrupted about thirty years ago. The subprime crisis it has curbed the gap between poor countries and the impoverished West within which, however, inequalities between rich and poor have grown significantly.
In this frame Europe it is the area in which injustice appears least evident: the share of well-being in the hands of the middle class is 46 per cent of the total against 41 in the hands of the richest. In the USA the reports are reversed: billionaires control 46 percent of the country's wealth. Even more unbalanced is the map of wealth in other areas: the richest ten per cent control 58 per cent of the world's resources Middle East, the 55-in Latin america and the 43 in Far East.
The range widens when passing from income to assets: the poorest half of the world's population controls only 2 percent of the planet's assets, equal to only 2.900 euros per person. The richest 10 percent control 76 percent of resources (more than half a million euros for each adult).
Income inequality is strongest in Latin America and the Middle East, but has widened sharply in Russia where the pie held by billionaires has practically doubled in the last decade. And the phenomenon is also interesting the China: income inequality has decreased but wealth is now concentrated among the super rich in proportions similar to those in the United States.
Thanks to stock market boomFueled by low rates, the top 1 percent of the US population has secured 38 percent of the wealth created since 1995, versus a miserable 2 percent of the poorest. Also worth noting the gender gap: wealth in the hands of women is stuck at 35 per cent of the total, practically little moved in Europe and the USA, sharply declining in China
