Rich are getting Richer, and the Poor are getting Poorer

By Claudia Simone Ene

Even if today’s world is coated with glitter in a way that everything looks beautiful from the outside, unfortunately, the economic inequality creates walls between those who have financial power and those who don’t. Though nowadays, this aspect is observed with research, it existed, and it was discussed on different scales and fields since the early years.

"The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer” is an aphorism, suggesting that the effect of free-market capitalism is producing inequality between people. Many economists have proved this during the time.

In the Roman Empire, economic disparities during the Augustan age was almost the same as it is nowadays in the United States.

On Newton’s first law of motion, it was indicated that people in power would remain in power unless they are not facing an external force. Darwin supported the idea that in a world of financial evolution, people with wealth and power will do their best to protect or grow their wealth.

During the time, economists had tried to chart the evolution of inequality and have estimated that the explanation of rich getting more productive, while poor getting poorer, arrived in two stages: the rise of mass education and when the politics started to acquire from the economics. So, the inequality began to rise in the early eighties, becoming dramatic in the United States but increasing in Britain, Canada, Australia, parts of Europe, and Japan. On the other side, after 1980, the process of globalization had been distributed among different classes, and countries from East Asia and India benefitted from fantastic growth.

As for today's world, a new report from Oxfam in 2019, states that 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people representing 60 percent of the world’s population. And more than this, the richest 22 men in the world own more wealth than all women in Africa. The inequality has reached extreme levels as the number of billionaires has doubled over the last decade.

It has been approximated that two-thirds of billionaire wealth exist because of inheritance or a connection to government, increasing economic inequality. Even if they inherited or acquired their wealth in time, rich people have more chances to watch their money growing over time by investing in the best financing advice. Moreover, they use their revenues to pay as little tax as possible thanks to good tax accountants, while poor people pay taxes and work for small wages to have food and houses where to lives. Furthermore, rich people can influence politicians and media and make more money. In comparison, poor people don't have access to high-level institutions to speak out and start earning more.

And even though we have access to multiple sources nowadays, making money and getting rich from nothing is hard, especially because governments and companies are not supporting the poor people enough. Sexist and flawed economies sustain the inequality gap and empower wealthy people to acquire more fortune, in exchange for ordinary people, mostly women, and girls.

Oxfam's report demonstrates that governments are under-taxing the wealthiest people and companies, failing to raise enough revenue to deal with poverty and economic inequality.

But, except that rich people are paying fewer taxes and are supported by governments to get richer, why are they successful, while poor people are struggling?

Some of the reasons are that rich people have multiple sources of income, while poor people have only one source of income, so they can’t get more. Rich people are trained to think long-term, while poor people believe in the short-term, and they fail to open new businesses or gain more money. Thirdly, wealthy people invest in themselves first, while poor people spend most of their money on liabilities, and they left nothing to invest and get more productive.

Global inequality is a severe problem that becomes more defined with every decade. The rich are getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer, mostly because of the broken economies. Having this into consideration, governments must ensure that wealthy individuals and corporations are paying fair taxes and must prioritize parents, children, and most vulnerable and to build a healthy and robust economy for all.

Taking all these into consideration, United Nations, through its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, is engaging in promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all and reducing inequalities within and among countries. Unfortunately, the difference is present everywhere globally and threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction, and destroys people's sense of fulfillment and can quickly turn into breed crime, disease, and environmental degradation. So, United Nations is promoting the social, economic, and political inclusion of all and is trying to reduce inequalities of the outcome by eliminating laws, policies and practices, improving proper legislation, policies and actions. The goal's target is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and invest more in education, health, and social protection. Moreover, it aims to improve the regulations and monitor the global financial markets and fairly help the implementation of rules, but also to progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average.

Meantime, we have reasons to believe that “rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer” will become a part of the human history and economies will become more stable, offering equal rights for everyone.

Sources:

• World’s billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people

• About the Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

• The rich are still getting richer. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/inequality-wealth-rich-still-getting-richer/

• The rich can’t get richer forever, can they? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/the-rich-cant-get-richer-forever-can-they