Super-rich are making the rest of us wealthier, too
The rich are getting richer. The Guardian reports, with palpable distaste, that “the UK ranks of the ultra-rich have swelled”, as another 400 people passed the $50million (£38million) mark this year. Globally, the top 1 per cent own half of the planet’s wealth.
How does that statistic make you feel? Envious? Maybe not, but a little bit uneasy, at least? There are still hundreds of millions of people on our planet scratching out bare, diseased, illiterate lives, lacking electricity, choking from indoor fires, drinking filthy water.
Would it really hurt the plutocrats, you might ask, to give away a few of their millions? After all, they’d hardly notice; but think of the life-changing impact that those millions might have if turned into bicycles, school books or clinics.
Reader, I have news for you. You are one of those plutocrats, at least by global standards. Almost every family in Britain is in the world’s richest five per cent by assets, and three million of us are in the top one per cent.
If your assets, including your home, are worth half a million pounds or more – a category that includes most London householders – you’re one of the super-rich. If we measure income rather than assets, many more of us get into the club. Anyone earning approximately £23,000 a year is in the top one per cent. The average wage in Britain is £27,300.
With that addendum, let me ask the question again. Why don’t the rich – that is to say, you – give their money away? You doubtless make charitable donations, but most of us could afford to hand away a bit more, couldn’t we? What you spend on your mobile phone might feed a family in a Brazilian favela. What you spend on your shoes could buy a cataract operation in Africa.
You could, in theory, give away all your assets. That was Jesus’s sobering advice to the otherwise righteous chap who asked what else he ought to be doing: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor”.
Suppose you did that. Would you reduce the number of poor people in the world, or simply add one more to
‘As poor countries drop socialism and join the global market, their citizens get better-paid jobs’
their company? No society has ever eliminated poverty by taking money from the rich. (Jesus, for what it’s worth, was unequivocal about that, too: “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.”)
What reduces poverty is not the redistribution of existing wealth, but the creation of new wealth through specialisation and exchange. As previously poor countries drop socialism and protectionism and join the global market, their citizens, especially those on low incomes, get better-paid jobs.
Those jobs are funded, directly or indirectly, by the global rich – which, as I think we’ve established, means you. Cheer up: you’re already helping.
There’s a report on the BBC website about Dublin wanting a hard border in Ireland. A cabinet minister in the Republic is calling for more police patrols and stricter checks on animal health.
True, the report is from 2001, at the height of the foot and mouth outbreak. Still, it’s striking that there is not the slightest suggestion that frontier checks might violate the Good Friday Agreement – unsurprisingly, as that accord has nothing to say about them.
In reality, a physical border was by then already impossible. It remains so today. Theresa May, Leo Varadkar and Jean-Claude Juncker have all confirmed that, even if there is no deal between the UK and the EU, none of them will raise physical infrastructure. So the argument, if you think about it, is about whether there will be no border and no deal on anything else, or no border and an amicable settlement of the other issues.
It’s at this stage that you realise that the entire row has become unreal, like a play by Samuel Beckett (who watched Ireland’s frontier come into existence as a schoolboy in Co Fermanagh).
“Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” “We’re waiting for Leo.” FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @DanielJHannan; at telegraph.co.uk/opinion