Global Wealth Inequality

The past year has seen one of the greatest transfers of wealth history. Around the world, as more and more working-class people slip into debt, or are facing eviction, or have burned through their savings to stay afloat during the pandemic, the world’s ~3,000 billionaires are billions richer. Wealth inequality permeates every aspect of life in late-capitalism. Though it’s easily perceptible, quantifying inequality remains complicated. Measures of income inequality, such as the GINI index, capture the distribution of income in an economy. But, as we’ve seen with the rise of billionaire fortunes this year, the capitalist class doesn’t rely on income for their fortunes. None of those people worked billionaire of times harder than they did the previous year. Their power comes from what they own, not what they produce. And so the most revealing metrics are those examining the inequality of wealth – the value of one’s…