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Common Dreams reports
The world's richest 1 percent now own more wealth than [the remaining] 99 percent combined. This finding comes from Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report for 2015, [redirects to a PDF] released last week. Last year, Credit Suisse found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 48 percent of global wealth. According to the new report, the [richest] 1 percent now hold 50.4 percent of all the world's household wealth.
Credit Suisse's findings are in line with Oxfam's prediction that global wealth inequality is only becoming greater. Last January, we predicted that the richest 1 percent would capture more than half of all household wealth by 2016. It looks like our prediction was right, but that we were too conservative, since it has happened a year early. Alas, our forecast was confirmed, but it's nothing to celebrate.
When you look at the very top of the global wealth pyramid, the situation is much more alarming. When we first calculated in January 2014, the 85 richest individuals own more wealth than the poorest half of the planet. This trend has also worsened since that time. Last January, it was down to 80 people.
The implications of rising extreme wealth inequality are greatly worrying. The highly unbalanced concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer and fewer people impacts social stability within countries and threatens security on a global scale. It makes poverty reduction harder, threatens political inclusion, and compounds other inequalities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @10:57AM
The first 99% of that recorded history has a vastly different socio-political landscape to what we have today. Before the rise of 20th century societies, we didn't have universal education, accessible mass communications and overabundance of basic necessities. Modern humans in western societies don't sit at the bottom of Marslow's pyramid, to trivially equate their organizational capabilities to those who were is extremely naive.
Mark my words, the 21st century will likely see significant changes in social order under the pressure of the capabilities computing put in people's hands, just like the 20th century saw massive changes in the face of widespread industrialization and the 19th century saw in the face of novel forms of state and military organization.