The world’s super-rich have amassed so much wealth since the pandemic that even a Tory minister can see something is amiss, says the Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
They benefited from stimulus packages that pushed up asset prices. They benefited from low interest rates that helped them to expand their property empires.to Credit Suisse, lower interest rates and government support programmes resulted in “a huge transfer” of wealth from the public sector to private households, which saw their debts lowered and the value of their assets, shares and properties, rise.
The obscenity of the system is made possible by the dramatically diminished bargaining power of labour. Weak labour is cheap labour. More lucratively, the world’s workers can increasingly be mobilised according to employers’ precise needs, so not a penny is wasted. The purpose is to transform the human worker into a machine that can be switched off when not in use . In 2020, Amazon’s UK sales soared by half to £19.4bn.
And if any of those politicians have dissenting thoughts and consider raising taxes, financial elites threaten to abscond with their wealth, or protest that their entrepreneurial ambitions will be extinguished. The media framing redistributive policies as radical or destructive is a powerful shock collar, too.that 143 of 161 countries actually froze tax rates for the rich during the pandemic, and 11 countries reduced them.
What’s most striking about the post-pandemic profit boom is the truly global nature of the problem. It’s not only the hope of a world recalibrated by Covid towards stronger public infrastructure that is turning to dust in our mouths. An older dream is dying too: of a post-cold-war globalisation that was supposed to bring us all closer, usher in a utopia of free trade, growth, employment and sustainable development.
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