In the five years since taking up my role as the United Nation’s poverty expert, the world’s five richest men have seen their net worth rocket from an already absurd US $ 340 billion to a frankly sickening $ 1.1 trillion. This, while the wealth of almost five billion people has fallen over the same period.
The number of people living under the World Bank upper poverty line of $ 6.85 a day – 3.5 billion people, almost half the world’s population – has barely changed since 1990.
Clearly the doctrine we have all been brought up on – that economic growth is the answer to poverty, unemployment and a whole host of other social ills – has been working well for the Musks and Zuckerbergs of our world. But the rising tide has not lifted all boats: Rather it has propelled an elite few onto superyachts, leaving inequality, poverty and environmental collapse in their wake.
This economic dominance is easily converted into political influence, allowing the ultra-rich to block progressive policies that could close this vast wealth gap, and to protect their own interests – Donald Trump and Elon Musk parading a Tesla outside the White House being a textbook example for the ages. In a country in which approximately 10 million children live in poverty, Americans, like the rest of us, have been conned into thinking that making it easier for the elite to make more money is in their best interests.
We must not continue to fall for this trick. Extreme wealth creates, not solves, extreme poverty. It redirects scare resources and production away from essential social services, and towards the lavish whims of the rich. It fuels climate change, which impacts people in poverty more than any other group. And it undermines democracy.
Just as we have a poverty line – the line below which society has decided no one should fall – we need an extreme wealth line. A limit beyond which society decides no one should rise because of the risks to democracy, society, the economy and the environment. A limit beyond which accumulated wealth is evidently a result of policy failure, of cronyism, corruption or monopoly power and will buy you too much political influence or create too much environmental damage. Setting a wealth limit would be a crucial step in ensuring wealth serves society, rather than distorting it.