In a landmark speech about social mobility in 2013, the then United States president, Barack Obama, warned against the problem of growing inequality in the starkest possible terms: “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to … our way of life.”
He was talking primarily about America, where the income share of the top 1% almost doubled between 1980 and 2015. But he could have been equally talking about Poland, the United Kingdom or a number of other wealthy countries as reflected in the graph below.
Covid-19 has made things even worse. The pandemic has enabled the global elite to increase their wealth rapidly – in some cases by enormous amounts – at the same time as many workers lost their jobs.
Income share of top 1% in wealthy countries
Things could get much worse in years to come. To understand how and why, it is…