THE POVERTY OF POVERTY STUDIES.

If you see a big house and a lot of little houses, does it suffice to complain about how big the big house is?  In the potted political economy popular with Common Dreams types, the answer is probably yes.

A landmark report on global inequality published Wednesday shows that the chasm between the richest slice of humanity and everyone else continued to expand this year, leaving the top 0.001%—fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires—with three times more wealth than the poorest half of the world’s population combined.

The global wealth gap has become so staggering, and its impact on economies and democratic institutions so corrosive, that policymakers should treat it as an emergency, argues the third edition of the World Inequality Report, a comprehensive analysis that draws on the work of hundreds of scholars worldwide. Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a researcher at the World Inequality Lab, is the report’s lead author.

“Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention,” reads the new report. “The benefits of globalization and economic growth have flowed disproportionately to a small minority, while much of the world’s population still face difficulties in achieving stable livelihoods. These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.”

The richest 10% of the global population, according to the latest data, own three-quarters of the world’s wealth and capture more income than the rest of humanity. Within most countries, it is rare for the bottom 50% to control more than 5% of national wealth.

“This concentration is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating,” the report observes. “Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centimillionaires has grown at approximately 8% annually, nearly twice the rate of growth experienced by the bottom half of the population. The poorest have made modest gains, but these are overshadowed by the extraordinary accumulation at the very top.”

“The result,” the report adds, “is a world in which a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability.”

Ah, yes, would you rather be Adam Gimbel or Sam Walton, making your money by reducing the price those billions pay for their staples, or Louis Faberge, jeweller to the Tsars?  Market processes reduce poverty and lift up middle classes.  World poverty has declined in the first quarter of this century.  That is something to hail.  Indeed, we might have Trumpian populism and the trade protectionism that infects both major U.S. political parties as a consequence of that nasty neoliberalism.  "In India and China, the past three decades of freer markets have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, a feat the previous three decades of left-leaning development economics had singularly failed to accomplish."

We might, dear reader, be seeing recognition of those realities in the very slacktivism that accompanies the predictable carping about high net worth individuals.

Enraged young people from Morocco to Madagascar, Kathmandu to Lima continue to lead street protests worldwide demanding accountability and challenging economic systems because they are not working for them. They are frustrated by poor service delivery, abuse of power concentrated in the hands of a few, unfulfilled promises, economic systems that continue to squeeze the little they earn, unemployment, unjust debt and climate breakdown.

They are drawing a red line against the failed systems and saying loud and clear, “Enough is enough.”

This is a time bomb and a bigger explosion threatens the planet and everyone on it, regardless how fat their bank account is. But we have solutions. This is not rocket science and the global majority, the 99%, have the answers and are already putting them into practice.

Wealth taxes are a progressive solution to address extreme inequalities — far better than the consumption taxes that many governments in the Global South are imposing on their people to service unjust debt and compensate for unpaid taxes by the super-rich. Taxing the super-rich can generate significant recurring revenue and restore public trust. Tax revenues from the super-rich are enough to fund essential services, such as education, healthcare, and social safety nets, which are key drivers of long-term inequality reduction.

Participants in the People’s Summit are also demanding that rich polluters pay for just transitions to clean energy. They are calling for redistributing health care to guarantee reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. And they are demanding protection of civic space and cultural rights by defending the freedom to speak, organize, and create.

The 2025 G20 Leaders Summit taking place not far from the We the 99 Peoples Summit has an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past by listening to the global majority that are gathered at Constitution Hill. Global leaders, including the G20, must stop turning for solutions to the same elites who created and continue to fuel the inequality crisis. Instead, they need to listen to the voices of the 99% – the people who have endured inequality and survived against all odds.

The 99% hold the answers. And the answer is clear: replace the system built by the 1% with a system designed for and by the 99%.

Morocco, Madagascar, Kathmandu, Lima, somehow that sounds like a list of places that Our President has a pungent description for.  Pesthole countries taxing the wealth of their super-rich?  As if they're not contemplating a move to the Cayman Islands or Texas already?  Interestingly, though, there's something missing from that "replace the system."  You see the luxury beliefs of North American AWFULs: clean energy, reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, cultural rights.  You don't see any "It's what comes after capitalism -- when the integument bursts asunder and the expropriators are expropriated -- that will enable humanity to leave war, tyranny, and poverty behind."  Why, it's as if egalitarian thinking has become so luxury a belief that the nudists and nature-cure cranks are now wearing the socialist ideology as a skin suit.