Who needs £1 billion to live on?

The Christmas period is a time for celebration as well as reflection on the state of the world.

It is a time for charity and generosity, when we all come together to share and reach out to those less well off than ourselves. And yet we live in an incredibly unequal world.

In the UK, some 20% of the population live in poverty – 8 million working adults, 4 million children and 1.9 million pensioners.

A recent social media posting declared that if all the billionaires in the world were reduced to having just £1 billion to get by on, then the wealth released could solve most of humanities problems.

The problems that could be resolved included climate change, world poverty and homelessness. 

This revelation really does get you thinking. First, why does any one person need more than £1 billion to live on. Most people could and do survive on so much less.

The present wealth division seems to be created on the basis of the need for a small number of super rich people to prosper at the cost of everyone else. If everyone had sufficient, then the possibility for a few to exploit the many would not exist.

The whole thing is absurd. Yet, at the recent election people seem to have voted for this absurdity to continue. 

One amusing social media post referred to how in France, the government was seeking to put the retirement age up to 62 – the response – people run to the barricades in protest. In Britain, politicians say the retirement age needs to go up to 75 because otherwise those earning more than £80,000 will have to pay a bit more tax – the response –  vote for them. (I would add that the extension of the retirement age was not in any of the manifestos in the UK election).

The very rich continue to get richer, while the mass of people get poorer. In a country of more than 150 billionaires, how can it be right that more than one million go to foodbanks.  Homeless levels grow and children co hungry. It is an inequality that cannot sustain.

The Labour Party manifesto offered a programme to address this inequality - it was rejected out of hand. Instead, we move ahead with a Brexit deal guaranteed to make the poor poorer. A world where foodbanks multiply in the fifth richest economy in the world.

The present unequal and unjust system is creaking - the only answer is for a proper redistribution from the few to the many - failure to take such action will have serious repercussions for rich and poor alike.

published in Wanstead & Woodford Guardian - 27/12/2019