It is quite clear that the neoliberal experiment has so-far benefitted those who are already rich. Most of the ‘new’ wealth has gone to them. In the UK figures from the ONS for example, assert that the average household wealth of the top 1% (263,000 people) is £3.8 million, while that of the poorest 10% of households is £15,400. The median wealth was £302,500. People in the lowest 60% hold just one fifth of wealth. In Australia, the richest 20 per cent hold nearly two thirds of Australia’s wealth. Oxfam claim that the world’s richest 26 people possess the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the world’s population.
Oxfam said the wealth of more than 2,200 billionaires across the globe had increased by $900bn in 2018 – or $2.5bn a day. The 12% increase in the wealth of the very richest contrasted with a fall of 11% in the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population.
The rich have wealth and the power it brings and they seem to reassure themselves this is because they are more deserving than others. The working class has been stuck with low wages and bad and precarious conditions of work – if workers become unemployed then the system sets out to persecute them until they take whatever is going, no matter how much it cripples them. There is more freedom for the rich.
However this change in patterns of wealth and income, has also lead to us depending on the rich for action as they control the money and property and the businesses. And action to reduce Climate Change or social inequality has almost not happened at all.
So we have a problem with no apparent solution.
The rest of this post largely comes from another blogger whose work I admire. I’ve edited, rearrange, added and abridged a little. But please go to the original.
- https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-07/the-ignorance-of-wealth/
- The Ignorance of Wealth
- By Eliza Daley, originally published by By my solitary hearth June 7, 2022
There are regular laments these days about our crisis of imagination. We face existential crises, and yet nobody with any sort of influence has any sort of idea what to do about any of it. The typical strategy seems to be ‘more of the same’ on steroids. Who would suggest that doing the same thing is going to have different results? And not only different, but polar opposite results! This is idiocy.
We turn to the rich for solutions. Living on the borderlands of that world, as I do, I’ve known quite a number of rich people… and they’re not sociopaths… they’re just… not that bright… The rich are not cruel by design. They often desire to do good in the world and believe they are doing so. But they are so blinded by their own sense of self worth — I must be smart; I have all this money! — they don’t see the real world effects of their actions….
In this self-reinforcing world, wealth and status can breed complacency and a sort of smug sense of rectitude — which then turns into social blindness, self-absorption, and not a little stupidity…. Partly this is because there is a high degree of reluctance to call them on their idiocy. They live in an opaque bubble-land that admits no opinion or evidence that might conflict with their own wants or values or need to be smart. They are ignorant, and yet lead through their wealth.
This blind ignorance of society’s leaders is not something we like to acknowledge. Yet it holds sway over everything, over all the conversations we are having, and these leaders are the people who have orchestrated this whole mess
I don’t think we have a crisis of creativity or a lack of imagination, but I do think we are looking for imagination from the wrong people. Those who do not have wealth or prestige are creating wonderfully imaginative new ways of being. In fact, those who are outside this system, the have-nots, have always made life with few resources and with an inventiveness that is just astounding.
We need to look away from the money and status and look instead to those who already live small lives, as our exemplars
We can’t depend on power and wealth to unmake themselves. Powerful and wealthy people are just not smart enough to make these changes, and they think they will survive anyway.
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Wealth can protect people from information, or hide it from them, or make it so they don’t want to know about things which might threaten that wealth, no matter how nice they are – and their servants/employees may not want to upset them either, as its often not a good recipe for keeping a job.
If we are looking for solutions, then we may need to look away from the centres of the problem. We may have to rely on those who are already facing the problems of life as they are now and working together to do their best to defend against them, or change the system, while being ignored by the rich. These people may have much greater capacity for change.
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 