The Truth About Extreme Global Inequality

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/15-3

The crisis of capital, the rise of the Occupy movement and the crash of Southern Europe have brought the problem of income inequality into mainstream consciousness in the West for the first time in many decades. Now everyone is talking about how the richest 1 percent have captured such a disproportionate share of wealth in their respective countries. This point came crashing home once again when an animated video, illustrating wealth disparities in the US, went viral last month. When an infographic catches the attention of tens of millions of internet users, you know it is hitting a nerve.

But the global scale of inequality remains largely absent from this story. So we at /The Rules decided to put together a video that would give it some attention.

While this information is not new, it is still startling. In the video we say that the richest 300 people on earth have more wealth than the poorest 3bn - almost half the world's population. We chose those numbers because it makes for a clear and memorable comparison, but in truth the situation is even worse: the richest 200 people have about $2.7 trillion, which is more than the poorest 3.5bn people, who have only $2.2 trillion combined. It is very difficult to wrap one's mind around such extreme figures.

But we wanted to do more than just illustrate the brutal extent of inequality; we also wanted to demonstrate that it has been getting progressively worse. A recent Oxfam report shows that "the richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years, with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process", while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth.