3. Wealth and Poverty
Family 3 children
average disposable income:
2.900 euro monthly
Wealth (savings, property, …):
125.000 euro
4. = more than sufficient to provide sanitation,
electricity, potable water and a comfortable house
⇕
• 1 in 3: no basic sanitation
•1 in 4: no electricity
•1 in 7: lives in a slum
•1 in 8: hungry
•1 in 9: no drinkable water
5. In case of equal distribution each single
person
$ 23 daily
⇕
one out of six < $ 1.25 daily.
Wealth and Poverty
= scandal
6.
7. 85 persons = 3,5 billion people
1% richest : ± 50% wealth
⇕
70% poorest: 3% wealth
1% richest : $ 1,6 million
= 700 x (majority)
13. “If a Martian came to the Earth to do a
report on us and started with the
Millennial Goals and then read what
we're doing, the Martian would get back
into his spaceship and say there's really
no worry about the Earth. They don't even
do what they say they're going to do.”
James Wolfensohn (WB)
14.
15. Two Gaps
•South as a whole vs North
•Tail ends: 10% richest vs 10% poorest
22. 0
5
10
15
20
25
1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Construction of
Welfare state
Neoliberal
offensive
Top percentile in totale
income US
23. 20
25
30
35
40
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Construction of
Welfare state
Neoliberal
offensive
Top decile in total
income Europe
24. Rate of return to capital
vs growth rate of world output
Piketty
Welfare
state
Neoliber
alism
25.
26.
27. The crisis
64 million people
into extreme poverty
high-net-worth individuals
($ 1 million)
wealth: + 41%
29. The crisis as shock therapy
“That is why crises are also opportunities. We
can get things done that we could not do
without the crisis.”
Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister
30. Loss of Purchasing power
• Greece: -40%
• Portugal: > -20%
• Spain: -22%
• Great Brittain: -22%
• Ireland: -14%
• Italy: -10%
32. “65 countries (43% of the 150)
will be at a high or very high risk
of social unrest in 2014. For 54
countries the risk of instability is
medium and for the remaining 31
countries it is low or very low.
Compared with five years ago, 19
more countries are now in the
high-risk categories.”
The Economist
Social unrest
34. Fundamental contradiction
• Inequality = rich minority poor(er)
majority
• Democracy = the power lies with the people,
so with the poor(er) majority.
• If the poor (numerical prevalence) assert
their (economic) interests the end of the
inequal wealth and privileges of the elite
Elite = against ‘real’ democracy
35. Greek antiquity
Aristotle
“Democracy is rule to the advantage of the
poor. None of the diverging systems aims at
the profit of every type of citizen in common.”
“In democracy, the poor are they sovereign
excluding the rich because they are the most
numerous, and the opinion of the majority is
law.”
36. Greek antiquity
1. A small elite rules. The lower classes (the
majority) are kept under the thumb. They have no
voice in decision-making, control and awareness of
the group is important.
2. Within the small elite adversarial debate is
needed. Tyrants and dictators are excluded.
3. It is not the rich who exercise power (directly),
which is done by a 'political' class or a small minority.
37. Bourgeois revolutions
Jacobins (left):
universal suffrage (for men), a progressive tax
system, free education, abolition of slavery in
the colonies ...
Right wing: Law ‘Le Chapelier’:
prohibition of unions and strikes
38. Bourgeois revolutions
“A country governed by the owners is in the social order,
one in which the rule is non-owners in the state of
nature.”
Boissy d’Anglas
“The supreme power cannot take from any man any part
of his property without his own consent. Men,
therefore, in society having property, they have such a
right to the goods, which by the law of the community
are theirs, that nobody have a right to take them, or
any part of them, from them without their own
consent.”
Locke
39. Bourgeois revolutions
“The people are not fit to govern on their
own, so you need professionals of the
power.”
Montesquieu bi-cameral system
40. Bourgeois revolutions
Napoleon: Only Senate + Census suffrage
weighted voting (multiple votes depending on
taxes)
No taxation without representation
No representation without taxation
41. United States
“All communities divide themselves into the few
and the many. The first are the rich and well born,
the other the mass of the people. The people are
turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or
determine right. Give therefore to the first class a
distinct, permanent share in the government.
They will check the unsteadiness of the second…
Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve
in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to
pursue the public good?”
Alexander Hamilton (first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury)
42. United States
Today
Almost half of Congress (Senate) = millionaires.
median income = 3x House of Representatives
= 25x median household income
Powerful lobbies ensure that 'wrong' proposals
are blocked
43. Bourgeois revolutions
1. Political power limited to a small elite.
= crucial to secure the possession of the rich
2. A representative system such that the different
fractions (the bourgeoisie) are represented and that
the nobility no longer can dominate.
3. The majority of ordinary citizens is neutralized by:
census suffrage; weighted voting or bicameral
system.
44. Revolutions 1848 Lessons
Emerging labour movement
demand universal suffrage
skips to other countries
State:
• monopoly on violence
• Controle of brains
• Limit organisations
45. October Revolution 1917 & WW1
• Abolition Ancien Regime: Germany, Austria
• Universal suffrage (men):
Belgium: 1918; Netherlands 1917
• Beginning of the emancipation of women:
Netherlands: voting right in 1919
Belgium: 1948
France: 1946
46. Revolutions 1848/1917 & WW1
1. Elite done everything to avoid universal suffrage:
census suffrage; weighted voting; bicameral system
exclude women, foreigners, blacks, …
2. Only through struggle never ceded power
enforced (fight) or fright; 'despite' parliaments
general strikes; dozens dead
3. Control media (concentration) = critical
4. To curb or integrate parties and trade unions
5. Everything revolves around wealth distribution
47. Today
Incredible concentration of economical and financial power
80% controlled by 737 companies
40% ” ” 147 ”
50 ‘systems integrator firms’
‘silent take over’ of state & media
48.
49. “Big business bought all the democratic space
- with its parties, media and judicial
institutions. Of course, even this democracy
remains preferable to dictatorships and
authoritarian regimes, but at the same time it
is clear that the current form is not up to the
task to tackle the present crises.
Only when we envisage that problem and
articulate it, we can begin to formulate
alternatives.”
Arundhati Roy
51. Consequences for democracy
• The public debate is not done in the civil society
but in and (managed) by the media (controlled by
big capital)
• The electoral campaigns occur mainly in the mass
media and are fashioned by the mass media
Elections = media spectacle
It is no coincidence that the core issue of
democracy / inequality, i.e. wealth tax is ignored in
the media and in political debates.
52. Conclusions
• So far the elite has managed (ups and downs) to
neutralize core contradiction of inequality and
democracy; Democracy is shaped in such a way
that it does not endanger the redistribution of
wealth.
• Potential unrest = big risk
• If we want to tackle inequality thoroughly; then we
have to address the issue of democracy and the
‘silent takeover’ of the media and the state.
• Not an easy task. The continent where they
experiment most in that field is Latin America.
Maybe we can learn from them.
53. To fight for more global tax
justice is to reconquer fiscal
democracy in the service of the
global general interest,
54.
55. Greek antiquity
Plato
Aristocracy = best political regime
“In the last stage of degeneration, democracy, the
most free city, descends into tyranny, the most
enslaved.”
“Agitated by the stinging drones, the poor revolt,
killing some rich, and expelling the rest. They set
up a new constitution in which everyone remaining
has an equal share in ruling the city.”
