On the home page of Oxfam’s website in May 2019, very interesting statistics are thrown on the rich-poor gap under the header, “Extreme poverty vs. extreme wealth: how big is the inequality gap?”. The first statistic is: The wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $900 billion in the last year which is $2.5 billion a day. Last year 26 people owned the same as 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity. Every day 10,000 people die because they lack access to affordable healthcare.
Oxfam adds, the life expectancy in the richest parts of Sao Paulo, Brazil is 79 years while in the poorest areas of the city it is 54 years. By reiterating that ‘Inequality is not inevitable’ Oxfam makes a note of the prevailing children without teachers, clinics without medicines: the human cost of inequality is devastating. “The growing gap between rich and poor is undermining the fight against poverty, damaging our economies and fueling public anger across the globe”
The rich-poor gap is the most important parameter which is reflective of all other well-being factors directly or indirectly. Societies with widespread poverty could have more reasons to hope than societies with rising divide. The rich-poor gap is the core parameter that correlates with the state of humanity and welfare in the world. The rich are getting richer at an increasing rate while the poor are getting poorer.
The trend shows that in the days to come more and more people will be slipping into poverty or extreme poverty. What kind of a life are we pushing ourselves into? Where did we go wrong? Is there any hope for the future? Who is responsible for this pathetic state of humanity? Is there at least someone responsible for a solution and working on this? No clear answers. There seem to be no definite clue anywhere as to why this gap is increasing or how it can be reversed.
The agenda is out-of-scope for individual countries that are fully occupied. National governments face immense challenges in meeting the very demands on them. It is impossible for individual countries to ponder on issues that have unprecedented global relevance. It is therefore very appropriate that the onus for the state of affairs rests with the international community.
Too many international agencies looking into every aspect of our world and yet brought us to this point, is unacceptable. Agencies functioning with unpassionate people who see their role/ assignments only in terms of tenure and prospects, delinked from core objectives make no change.
The rich-poor gap is not just another economic parameter that could be expected to fluctuate. In the complex life of ours, speculation today has an increasing role, across financial markets, politics, defense, policy making and almost everything. Each of us as individuals, participate consciously or unconsciously in this speculative life. This unprecedented speculation comes with a bonus or a penalty based on how we respond. The currency that was once introduced as a pure economic entity has been slyly accumulating a social value at an increasing rate. This means a one rupee note of a beggar and a one rupee note of a billionaire have uneven powers and consequences when put into action.
In the free-market capitalist system of ours, the social power of money has an increasing role. This social power of money is inextricable from its economic power or value. The rich-poor gap can be fully if not largely attributed to this social power of money. This gap would not have been evident if money only had an economic power.
The rich-poor gap is as much a social phenomenon as it is an economic one. This gap is perhaps the most important parameter to man that remains grossly under-estimated today. This gap could have a huge stake on collaborative living. The rich-poor gap has a proportionate bearing on the situations prevailing in any society and also in how we react to it as individuals or as regimes.
Societies with zero gaps are like static societies where there would be automatic societal harmony while those with significant gaps are dynamic restless societies. This implies that societies with greater divide would be faced with unprecedented and increasing challenges. Just as zero-gap societies require less or no policing, nations with zero gaps bordering each other could require no defense forces either.
The rich-poor gap of a nation is highly reflective in how a country perceives and responds to evolving situations. If this proposition is true, then nations with significant gaps would find it increasingly challenging to engage with each other.
At some point in our history, to all of us food, shelter, and healthcare were not a big issue and life was a relaxed one with more time to spend with family and neighbors. Today a big majority of the people world over are struggling hard like never before, to just avail these.
Much worse, the pace of life is constantly increasing. Many people are already performing even to the zenith of human capability, just for survival. Things cannot go worse for this increasing population.
Each individual of every society must determine if the cries of the hungry children, the laughter of insane people on the streets, the aged and abandoned, the untreated sick, and the lives of the disabled move them or not.
Radical solutions require radical reasoning. It is important that the economic growth that nations witness is well spread out. International agencies that desire to lower this rich-poor divide would do well by emphasizing on intra-national metrics than internationaly. The aspirations of sociologists and environmentalists too can be expected to be met by closing this gap.
The rich-poor gap is more a socio-economic phenomenon that transgressed with time. Any fundamental action to reduce the social clout of wealth, which is absolutely necessary, would obviously be seen as socialist. Unfortunately, any effective solution toward reducing this gap could only come from the socialist’s lab.
Reducing the rich-poor gap is tangible, manoeuvrable, and verifiable. However implementation of effective measures needs to be cautious and gradual. Speculative markets thrive only where there are big rich-poor gaps. The very idea of the need to control wealth accumulation could itself lead to speculative avalanches.
Governments and populations must be sensitized on the prevailing metrics that matter to them as people rather than as a nation. Dynamic purpose-oriented approaches at wealth-concentrated zones could be the first step toward an effective solution.
So, explicitly the task at hand would be to prevent further wealth accumulations and reducing wealth concentrations in any and all possible ways. Introduction of ceilings could be one. Governments must involve and work closely with them at the top of the ladder and look for its effectiveness at the bottom of the ladder.
