Skip to main content
Unity supplement
Wealth-hoarders bring our world to the brink
That Oxfam’s revelations on wealth fail to shock shows just how far we’ve fallen, writes RABBIL SIKDAR

EVEN as we are no longer shocked by it, the latest Oxfam figures on inequality still feel shocking. The richest 62 individuals in the world now own as much as half of humanity. Last year that number was 86, so wealth is being consolidated into ever-fewer hands. You could fit the owners of half the world’s wealth into a plane without a sweat — maybe even a coach.

What a world this is where the unfair, unjust and unequal status quo has convinced people that it is born of economic rationality. Yet calling for a more even distribution of wealth, so not everything is hoarded in the pockets of a few dozen people, is deemed a wish for economic chaos and travesty.

We are heading towards another financial crash. This extremely lopsided balance of wealth, ensured by a collapsing financial system constantly resuscitated and propped up by public money, cannot sustain itself. The free-market politics, eight years after it nearly drove itself over the cliff, is veering in the same direction this time.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
The Canary Wharf skyline viewed through the haze from Alexandra Palace, north London
Features / 12 September 2025
12 September 2025

Climate justice and workers’ rights movements are uniting to make the rich pay for our transition to a green economy, writes assistant general secretary of PCS JOHN MOLONEY, ahead of a major demonstration on September 20

A person holding an energy bill
Britain / 31 March 2025
31 March 2025
Campaigners take part in a protest against the government's
Editorial: / 20 February 2025
20 February 2025
A general view of a central heating thermostat
Editorial: / 20 February 2025
20 February 2025