Grandstand. It is unprecedented. Since 1995, the richest 1% have captured 38% of the increase in wealth, while the poorest 50% have only captured 2%. At the same time, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 160 million people have fallen into poverty according to the World Bank. To what level of inequality will we continue to look the other way?
Like the comet from the movie don’t look up, it’s a social and political tornado that is heading towards us but in the face of which we do nothing, or far too little. Like climate disasters, we would tend to believe that inequalities only affect others. However, such a level of inequality is not compatible with the proper functioning of our democracies. Let’s look at what is happening all over the world: political crisis in the United States, demonstrations in Colombia, in Chile [entre 2019 et 2021] or in Lebanon… and three years ago, the “yellow vests” in France.
Everyone is affected by rising inequalities, as they fracture our societies and weaken our political systems. What about the environment? Extreme wealth breeds extreme levels of pollution: the development of space tourism during the Covid-19 crisis is an absurd illustration. What about health? Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have shown that even the health of the wealthiest is more fragile in an unequal society.
Governments have given up
Is France spared? Of course not. The richest 10% own half of the total wealth, while the poorest 50% must share 5% of the cake. And the situation is getting worse. According to the magazine Challenges, the 500 largest fortunes in France represented the equivalent of 10% of GDP in 2010, today we are at 43%. In the same country, between five and seven million people need food aid to survive. It is indeed extreme inequalities that we are talking about in our country, the sixth world power.
Let’s not look away from a seceding minority. Let’s also look at who is responsible for the situation. If multimillionaires and billionaires have become so rich over the past three decades, as well as in the midst of a pandemic, it is not thanks to the invisible hand of the market but because public policies are not fully playing their role.
During the pandemic, billions of public money have been poured out by governments with no quid pro quo. More broadly, for thirty years, governments have given up on inequality. However, these are not natural, they are the results of political choices: tax policies that only reduce the contribution of the very wealthy, cuts in public services and social benefits or even the privatization of public goods such as vaccines.
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