Economists estimate extreme poverty could be drastically reduced for a fraction of global defence spending, yet military budgets continue to expand year on year, says JON TRICKETT MP, ahead of the Stop the War International Conference on Saturday
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Wealth-hoarders bring our world to the brink
That Oxfam’s revelations on wealth fail to shock shows just how far we’ve fallen, writes RABBIL SIKDAR
As Unison launches its Year of Women Workers, ANNIE COGAN-THOMAS argues that stronger organisation and collective bargaining are essential to winning equality
Trade unions, trades councils and community organisations must work together to build lasting solidarity and resistance to the far right, argues DREW GILCHRIST
Recent violence in Belfast was not spontaneous — it was built on years of failure and political neglect, argues STIOFAN O NUALLAIN
As delegates meet in Brighton this week, Unison faces pressing questions about pay, organising, workers’ rights and political representation, explains ANDY CHAFFER
Andy Burnham’s growing stature has fuelled hopes of a Labour revival – but ALAN SIMPSON warns that Britain’s crisis runs far deeper than just its leadership and traces its roots to decades of financialised capitalism
EVEN as we are no longer shocked by it, the latest Oxfam figures on inequality still feel shocking. The richest 62 individuals in the world now own as much as half of humanity. Last year that number was 86, so wealth is being consolidated into ever-fewer hands. You could fit the owners of half the world’s wealth into a plane without a sweat — maybe even a coach.
What a world this is where the unfair, unjust and unequal status quo has convinced people that it is born of economic rationality. Yet calling for a more even distribution of wealth, so not everything is hoarded in the pockets of a few dozen people, is deemed a wish for economic chaos and travesty.
We are heading towards another financial crash. This extremely lopsided balance of wealth, ensured by a collapsing financial system constantly resuscitated and propped up by public money, cannot sustain itself. The free-market politics, eight years after it nearly drove itself over the cliff, is veering in the same direction this time.
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