—Matt Wuerker, Politico Magazine
Global inequality described …
“Places rarely suffer from having too many people, but frequently suffer from a few people taking far too much. By early 2008 it became evident that preceding the economic crash, the acquisition of most of the world’s remaining available land was occurring at rates never seen before. Huge swathes were being bought up by a tiny number of the super-rich. …
“The world with its billions does not have too many people, but it does have too many in their thousands who think that they are worth a million others.
“Individually these people take up the space that used to house hundreds; they consume fossil fuels and other resources far less sustainably than thousands of others collectively consume, and they demand the time and labour and subservience of tens of thousands of others in mining for their needs, manufacturing for them and servicing them in a way that deprives millions more of the potential benefits of that labour.
“Just think of all the human work required to create the materials and technology needed to furnish a grand mansion, to kit out a large yacht or construct a private plane, and then you can begin to comprehend how just one of the world’s many hundreds of billionaires, someone who can spend a couple of million dollars a day on leisure time outgoings, harms millions of other human beings who in total get by on less than that for all they need.
“Billionaires and multi-millionaires live in a state of luxury that could only be sustained, and can certainly only be justified if they were a separate species.”
—Daniel Dorling, Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists
Global inequality explained …
“The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he able to accumulate.”
“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”
—Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1
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