The world’s 225 richest people have a combined wealth equal to the combined annual income of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people. A 4 percent levy on their wealth would provide adequate food, safe water and sanitation, basic education, basic health care and reproductive health care for all those in the developing countries. It is facts like these that galvanised the massive protests against the WTO in Seattle last September.
The world’s 225 richest people have a combined wealth equal to the combined annual income of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people. A 4 percent levy on their wealth would provide adequate food, safe water and sanitation, basic education, basic health care and reproductive health care for all those in the developing countries. It is facts like these that galvanised the massive protests against the WTO in Seattle last September.
Everywhere the rich are getting richer while most workers see little or no improvement in their living standards. In the USA the wealth of the top 1% is greater than that of the bottom 95%. In Mexico 40 people own 30% of the wealth in that country of 95 million people. The housing crisis in Ireland demonstrates how even during an economic boom the gains don’t go to the working class.
The last 40 years have seen massive economic development and an increase in human knowledge. In the last 50 years man has gone to the moon and sequenced the human genome. But the capitalist system which delivered these miracles is unable to help the tens of millions who die every year because they lack access to basic medicine and clean water. According to the UN 2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation, 2 billion have no electricity and 100 million are homeless.
This inequality is fundamental to the way that capitalism works. This is why anarchists have and will continue to be at the heart of the anti-capitalist protests in London (J18. Mayday), Seattle (N30), Washington (A16) and Prague (S26). But protest is not enough, we want to change the world.
`first published in Workers Solidarity 60, September 2000
WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )