Date: 2025-05-01 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028158
OXFAM BRIEFING PAPER
AN ECONOMY FOR THE 1%
How privilege and power in the economy drive
extreme inequality and how this can be stopped
AN ECONOMY FOR THE 1%
How privilege and power in the economy drive
extreme inequality and how this can be stopped
TVM archive: OXFAM-bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-28158.pdf
Original article: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/592643/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en.pdf
The global inequality crisis is reaching new extremes. The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined. Power and privilege is being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest. A global network of tax havens further enables the richest individuals to hide $7.6 trillion. The fight against poverty will not be won until the inequality crisis is tackled.
This OXFAM briefing paper was written in January 2016 ... a little more than 8 years ago. Since then what OXFAM was writing about has become significantly worse with the rich 1% concentrating wealth at a truly obscene scale.
I am now 85 years old. and more than a little annoyed that those with extreme wealth and power seem to think that the current state of affairs is good and reasonable.
But I am also annoyed that those with brains and education have accepted this problem of growing economic inequality for so long without make some sort of 'rukus' about it.
In my own little way, I have tried to address this issue in my day to day work going back to the 1970s. My work had some impact ... in fact consierable impact at the individual and project level but not beyond that. None of that work has had any significant impact of the big issue referenced in this Oxfam report.
My thinking is based on the evolution of society, the environment and the economy over the past 60+ years ... essentially all of my adult life.
Mostly, modern economic analysis rarely seems to incorporate much of what happened pre-Reagan. Looking at the previous 60+ years, rather than 40+ years adds a lot more food for thought.
I remember writing in late 1973 that the big event of that year was the biggest economic event in all of history ... a fairly outrageous statement, but, I would argue, justified based on events in the subsequent several decades until now. Of course the event was the Arab oil boycott and the establishment of OPEC. Crude oil price went from around $3 a barrel to $13 a barrel to $30 in the course of about 18 months. Subsequently there were highs of over $100 a barrel for relatively short periods. About 50 years later a barrel of cruide oil is priced at around $60 a fluctuating by about +/- $10 up or down.
The big problem for the United States is that up to that time (1973) US industry had access to very low price energy and had done virtually nothing to increase energy efficiency. This contrasted with Europe and almost every other country where the use of oil for energy purposes had attracted a high tax for many years. There was a huge incentive to use oil energy efficiently in the rest of the world, but not in the United States. When the 1973 oil shock happened, the USA was badly prepared and for the rest of the 1970s, the American economy went into free fall!
To his credit, Ronald Reagan addressed this matter when he became President. The problem has been that his solutions have proven to be as damaging as they have been successful ... if not more so.
Starting with Ronald Reagan, there was a massive movement for companies to reduce costs by 'off-shoring' the manufacturing of products from the high wage United States to low wage countries around the world. This movement rapidly gained popularity with investors, even though millions of workers in the USA lost their jobs. The impact on the industrial heartland of America was catastrophic and decades later the problems, for the most part, remain unresolved.
This OXFAM report is about the economic state of affairs as of around 2015 ... almost 10 years ago. Not much has changed ... except perhaps that everything is now even more extreme than it was then.
I am in broad agreement with the OXFAM assessment of the problem.
My personal goal is to figure out how to change the management and ownership incentives so that there is a much more equitable distribution of benefit within the local, national and international socio-enviro-economic systems. Most of the building blocks to do this exist ... but are not linked in an effective way as a coherent system. I think it can be done, but mostly, the rich and powerful do not want it to happen since it is most likely to slow down their accumulation of wealth and power!