Extreme Wealth

We all notice when the poor get poorer: when there are more rough sleepers and food bank queues start to grow. But if the rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public and, for most of us, daily life doesn't change. Or at least, not immediately. In this astonishing, eye-opening intervention, world-leading philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns exposes the true extent of our wealth problem, which has spent the past fifty years silently spiralling out of control.

Look around any city and you will find millionaires and poverty all calling the same part of the world home. Despite the popular mantra, wealth has nothing to do with location, gender, race, or family background. For if it were true that your zip code dictated whether you became wealthy or not, getting rich would simply be a matter of moving home.

Getting rich is not a matter of environment, for if it were all the people in certain neighbourhoods would become wealthy; the people of one city would all be rich, while those of other towns would all be poor. Everywhere we see rich and poor living side-by-side, in the same environment, and often engaged in the same vocations. Getting rich is not the result of saving or thrift; many very penurious people are desperately poor whilst free spenders appear to get rich.

The leading lights of the tech revolution – Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk – have been hailed as savants and saviours of the modern age. And yet they are at the forefront of wealth inequality not seen since the heyday of the robber barons in the late 19th century, part of the slide to the First World War. Today, rampant inequality is inciting social unrest and undermining faith in the institutions of the democratic state. Citizens have been left at the mercy of unfettered capitalism – mere data subjects, endlessly surveilled, marshalled and increasingly angry and polarised.