Can there be democracy in such an unequal world?
As much as we might want to ignore it, the year begins darkly, politically speaking. Trump is turning the global order upside down, and we are facing a rapid growth of far-right options, which are very threatening and, at this moment, seem to have unstoppable force. For those of us who are older and have lived under dictatorship, this trend is almost incomprehensible, and it is inevitable that we ask ourselves how we got here.
The causes are multiple, obviously. From my point of view, however, there is one main one. After the Second World War, the social-democratic viewpoint predominated in the Western world, and the lives of most people improved considerably. From the 1980s onward, the neoliberal era began, the consequences of which we are suffering now. Until then, a certain redistribution of wealth was taking place in the West. In the 1980s, a series of mechanisms linked to globalization, authoritarian policies, and the suppression of trade unions were implemented, creating the conditions for wealth to be drained into the hands of a minority and altering income distribution. This is the significant growth of economic inequality, which generates inequalities of all kinds and always ends up translating into political polarization, a reflection of a fractured society. new edition of the World Inequality ReportThe report published a few days ago confirms this. The magnitude of inequality is now staggering, but above all, the trend is. If we look at how income is distributed, we see that the richest 10% of the world's population holds 53% of the total; the middle 40%, 38% of income—below what they should receive in an equal distribution—and the poorest 50% receives only 8% of the total. If we look at what happens with wealth—ownership of companies, land, housing, etc.—the distribution is even more unequal: the richest 10% holds 75% of the world's wealth; the middle 40%, only 23%; and the poorest half of humanity, 2%. In short: some 56,000 people—one-thousandth of the richest 1%—accumulate three times more wealth than the poorest 50%—some 4.1 billion people—in the world. And, as we see, even the middle class is deprived of the wealth it would deserve in an egalitarian world. It's no surprise, then, that we are witnessing such growing discontent.
Clearly, inequality is not the same everywhere. One of the most unequal countries is, precisely, the United States: according to 2024 data, the richest 1% owns 34.8% of total wealth, while the poorest 50% has only 1%. It is no coincidence, then, that American democracy, which seemed so solid, is showing desperate signs of being in very poor condition.
And we must be aware that democracy is incompatible with such a pronounced wealth disparity. Can anyone seriously believe that equal participation, cohesion, and a convergence of interests are possible when personal circumstances are so vastly different, when many need everything to change while others want everything to stay the same and their enrichment to accelerate? Do we still wonder how there is such tension? How, instead of being spaces for building agreements, parliaments have become rife with insults and, in certain places, have been completely nullified by dictatorships, physical violence, and repression? How is it that legal institutions have become divided and politicized, losing their function of impartiality?
A surprising aspect of the current crisis is that the vast majority of people experiencing impoverishment are turning to far-right options, when the revolutionary spirit used to lean to the left. This is not the first time this has happened. We know this well, knowing what Nazism and Fascism were, and even the Spanish Falange, which was born with working-class leanings. Populism and demagoguery are the foundations of these movements, and they point to scapegoats for everything: in Germany it was the Jews, in Spain largely the Catalans, and today it falls on immigrants. All based, of course, on a profound depoliticization of the population, now conveniently manipulated through social media.
This year, a conference on inequality will be held in Paris, featuring some of the world's most renowned economists, many of them from the team behind the World Inequality Report. We hope it will be successful and will be paying close attention to its recommendations. Because growing inequality is ruining everything. If we fail to reverse its growth, we are heading towards a collective disaster foretold. A type of disaster that, beyond a certain point, is usually unstoppable.
