Ever-growing inequality as the rich get richer

RESEARCH published yesterday by Oxfam ahead of this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, showing that the combined wealth of the richest 1% of the world’s population will overtake that of the rest of the world’s population next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked, must be a cause for great concern, if not anger.

Traditionally, this tremendous concentration of wealth was regarded as a social justice issue, but the potential consequences of this unsustainable imbalance make it a security issue.

A divide as profound as this, one that highlights and mocks the poverty endured by billions of people, must surely be regarded as a ticking timebomb because history has shown time and time again that such a reality is tolerated by the majority only for so long.

How much better it would be if capitalism recognised that a system that serves a tiny minority at the expense of the vast majority is doomed to failure eventually.

It must be a cause for concern too that national governments seem so ineffective — or unwilling — at tackling this huge issue.