STREET DOGS

NO PERSON, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease and the others all skin and bone. — Henry George One of our biggest challenges is the increasing disparity in wealth and income, with all its pernicious effects on societal health. Thomas Piketty’s databacked tour de force, Capital in the 21st Century, gave us two alarming pieces of news about this trend: inequality is worse than we thought, and it will worsen because of structural reasons inherent in our form of capitalism, unless we do something.

Piketty shows that an internal feature of capitalism increases inequality: As long as the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g), wealth will tend to concentrate in a minority, and that the inequality r > g always holds in the long term. He is not some lone-wolf academic with an eccentric theory of inequality. Scores of respected economists have given ringing endorsements to his book’s central thesis, including economics Nobel laureates Robert Solow, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.

The only solution to this problem, it seems, is the redistribution of the wealth concentrating within a tiny elite … but the difficulty is that political policymaking is itself greatly affected by the level of inequality. It is clear that elite forces shape public opinion and affect election outcomes with large-scale propaganda efforts through media they own or control.

The resultant political dysfunction makes it difficult to tackle our most pressing problems: lack of opportunity in education, lack of access to quality healthcare, man-made climate change, and the indecent injustice of inequality. — Syed Abbas Raza

Michel Pireu — e-mail: pireum@streetdogs.co.za