Here is an appropriate article to share on Budget Day.
The article below notes that while the global economy is uncertain, restless and inequality widening, the 1,542 billionaires of the world saw their wealth grow by 17% in one year! What it means is that all the neo-liberal economic policies coming out of World Bank/IMF, right wing economic schools, and all the Quantitative Easing monetary policies of central bankers, serves to only help the filthy rich get even more filthier.
This group of 1,542 persons now control US$ 6 trillion (US$6,000,000,000,0000) in wealth. They represent 0.00002% of the entire global human population of 7.6 billion. The last time the world has witnessed this unprecedented level of wealth inequality was during the early 1900s of Rockefeller and Carnegie, the so called Robber Baron times.
UBS, the banker that handles money for most of these billionaires, worries that the growing inequality between the rich and poor may lead to a “strike back”. This is really the sign of the times, when bankers are advising their clients to be less greedy! Things are so bad that even the IMF strongly recommends as a policy, to tax the richest 1% more.
It is against this global backdrop of massive inequality that lawmakers around the world must craft new progressive economic policies. To do so, lawmakers must be independent of the undue influence of money from the filthy rich. However, the above wealth inequality data tells a clear story that today, the vast majority of lawmakers, institutions and universities are firmly in the pocket of the very few.