Thanks to Pope Francis, Revolt Against the Global Super-Rich Is Underway

Off the World News Desk:

Thanks to Pope Francis, Revolt Against the Global Super-Rich Is Underway

“Chrystia Freeland is a Liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and author of "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich."

OTTAWA -- 2013 was the year the rise of the plutocrats made it to the top of the international agenda. Witness the remarkable consensus at the year's end of the world's centers of faith, power and money: Pope Francis published an apostolic exhortation criticizing the "economy of exclusion", US President Barack Obama named income inequality as the most important issue of our time, and New York, the global capital of the plutocracy, elected a mayor who won by attacking the "tale of two cities" the metropolis lived through during the political reign of its incumbent billionaire boss.

This recognition that surging income inequality is an urgent political problem marks an important shift. That's because the widening gap isn't a new story. Income inequality in much of the world has been rising for three decades. But until the 2008 financial crisis, and the global recession which it triggered, there were some plausible ways to deny -- or at least to hope -- that the rise of the 1 percent wasn't a problem.

The strongest argument was that even though those at the very top were pulling away from everyone else, people in the middle and even at the bottom weren't doing too badly either.

Globalization and the technology revolution, the story went, hadn't only created the vast fortunes of the 0.1 percent, they had improved the lives of the 99 percent with more and less expensive goods and services. That thesis was partly a chimera, magicked into being by the consumer credit bubble which created the temporary illusion of middle class prosperity. But this explanation was also powerful because it was partly true -- familiar goods from cars to t-shirts are cheaper and longer-lasting than ever before, and all our lives have been transformed by the internet and mobile communication.

Once the credit bubble burst, though, our wonderful new devices and consumer goods weren't enough to mask the other reality of the big economic transformation of our time -- the hollowing out of middle class incomes and jobs. It is this fact -- that, in a time of abundance, middle class incomes are stagnating and employment is anemic -- that has transformed rising income inequality from an academic issue into a political one.

And that is why 2013 was the year the revolt against the plutocrats began. Make no mistake -- this is a powerful and consequential political moment, which is being felt across the western industrial democracies and whose impact is only beginning…”


http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/news-alerts/item/12129-thanks-to-pope-francis-revolt-against-the-global-super-rich-is-underway


I wish I could be that optimistic. - Wes



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