VIEWPOINT 15

THE CURSE OF PLUTOCRACY 

It would be very easy to re-write all the usual stuff about the 1% -99% but I won’t as I want to follow a different path, at least for the majority of this blog.

Probably everyone on the planet is now fully aware of the painful income gaps between countries that have failed to narrow in over 50 years. Even China has seen inequality reduce (to a degree) but it could be argued the “wealth gap” in the so-called rich world economies has grown (witness America).

Overall, the list of countries lagging behind the trend towards less inequality has grown longer. And it is no stretch of the imagination to see recent trends in America as extremely worrying – the rewards from economic growth are visibly and increasingly being monopolised by the very well-off, leaving little or nothing (in terms of living standards) for the vast majority; they are stagnating.

Thus, a question… should the more fortunate, who enjoy longer and more affluent lives, give more money to those who still live in abject poverty? My personal view is that would not do much to help. Global aid (of any sort, except that which does some good through health programmes) generally do more harm than good. The most significant barrier to progress is not a lack of resources but bad government. However, it is exactly these governments that receive such aid either directly or indirectly, and this flow of foreign money undermines the governments own incentives to raise funds from their own people, which in turn requires growth-friendly policies and reform at all levels. Instead, aid shores up ill-functioning governments as well as encouraging “economic mugging” by those in power.

This is merely my viewpoint, but I am reminded of Confucius:

“If I give a man a fish, I feed him for one day; if

I teach him to fish, he can feed himself forever.”

Until next time (living long but not affluent),

Peripatetic Scribe