Tesla shareholders have approved paying the company's CEO, Elon Musk, a package of company shares valued at one trillion – that is, one million million or 10¹²—dollars. The electric car multinational's annual shareholders' meeting approved this payment as compensation to Musk—who is now the richest person in the world—but it will only materialize if the company reaches a series of sales and profit targets.

Looking at rental and home purchase prices, and seeing how salaries are clearly being outpaced by the rising cost of living, it's no surprise that a candidate who campaigned on slogans like "a city we can afford" won the New York City mayoral election.

At the macroeconomic level, Spain is booming. In fact, a few months ago, the OECD identified the country as the fastest-growing advanced economy this year, with a projected growth rate of up to 2.6%. But while the big numbers are dazzling, for many children and young people the narrative of economic growth sounds distant, almost unreal. Their reality is quite different: one of precariousness, inaccessible housing, and vanishing opportunities. Since 2007, social exclusion among children and young people has steadily increased, and today it is consolidating into a genuine generational divide. This is the warning issued in the 9th Foessa Report, prepared by Cáritas and presented this Wednesday. The foundation points out that children are emerging as the hardest-hit group: minors represent a third of all severe exclusion, and their poverty rate has risen to 29%, the highest of all age groups and one of the highest in Europe. Young people are one of the other two most affected groups.

Women's sport has become a central focus of current events. Its presence in Catalan newscasts has increased tenfold in the last decade and, although still far from parity, it already represents 30.6% of sports broadcasts, according to the Catalan Government's Plan to Promote Women's Sport in Catalonia 2024-2030. A comparison between the 1900 and 2024 Paris Olympics shows the extent to which the situation of women in professional sport has changed: at the 1900 Paris Olympics—the first to admit women—women athletes accounted for 2.2% of participants; by 2024, female competitors represented 50%.

Food prices have risen significantly since the end of the pandemic, hitting lower-income families hardest, both in Catalonia and across Spain and Europe. This is the main conclusion of the study. Why is the price of food rising? The role of the food oligopoly and proposals for a change in the model, published this Wednesday by the Barcelona Institute for Urban Research (IDRA). The study, prepared by researchers Rubén Martínez and Adrià Rodríguez, points out that strong business concentration, both globally and in national distribution, explains why food inflation has been so high over the past four years.

Matadepera is the municipality in Spain with the second highest net income per capita (€26,729), behind only Pozuelo de Alarcón in Madrid, with €30,524 per capita, and ahead of Boadilla del Monte, also in Madrid, with €26,668 per capita. These are 2023 data published this Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute. And despite the fact that the Community of Madrid occupies two places on the podium, the fact is that among the 15 municipalities in Spain with the highest net income per capita, there are eight Catalan ones (all in the province of Barcelona), while only five are in Madrid.

It's not a bad thing for some people to be rich, especially if their fortune was hard-earned, legally acquired, or inherited. None of these circumstances is a crime or something to be rejected. The fact that some people have quite a bit or much more than others isn't essentially negative. The point is that there are minimum standards that guarantee a decent life for everyone in society, that what is known as the social elevator works.

Things are going well for the richest. Much more so than for the rest, although global poverty is declining worldwide due to economic growth, although the COVID crisis halted this trend. And, at the same time, inequality is growing, not so much between countries but within them, with an ever-widening gap in societies between those who have the most and those who have the least. The richest 1% have stabilized their share of global wealth at around 40%, below the levels of the neoliberal policies inaugurated by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK during the period from 1980 to the mid-2000s, a period in which they became the owners.

For the first time, the number of billionaires worldwide (people with net worths of more than $1 billion) has surpassed 3,000. This is happening in a context of growth that has caused the richest 1% of the world's population to lose a small portion of their wealth. At the same time, poverty has decreased globally in recent years, but the COVID crisis halted this trend and has increased economic and social inequality within some countries. In this dossier, we review the list of the richest people by continent and examine which ones are richer by inheritance and which ones by their own merits.

The 10 kilometers separating the Tres Torres neighborhood of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and the Ciutat Meridiana neighborhood of Nou Barris represent the distance between the two Barcelonas, the richest and the poorest. Invariably, for years, these two neighborhoods have been at the two extremes of disposable income, a fact repeated in the latest data—corresponding to 2022—published this Monday by Barcelona City Council. Residents of both neighborhoods are separated by about 30,000 euros, meaning that those in Tres Torres have 3.5 times more disposable income than those in Ciutat Meridiana.

Michael Sandel (Minneapolis, 1953) is one of the most renowned academics in the study of economic inequalities, their roots and their social, cultural and political consequences. With a slow-paced but forceful argument, Sandel addresses theCompanies at the Hotel Casa Fuster in Barcelona to talk aboutEquality, what it means and why it matters (Edicions 62, translated into Catalan by Imma Estany), a book that puts on paper a conversation between him and the French economist Thomas Piketty –another of the world's leading figures in the field of economicsstudy of equality–, in which they reflect on what to do to achieve societies and a world in which wealth and social justice are more balanced.

Inequality is growing in Europe, but it has fallen in recent years in Spain thanks to the strong performance of the labor market. senior of the Bank of Spain Laura Hospido, and the deputy director of the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea, the think tank of banking and other large Spanish companies), José Ignacio Conde.

Sant Just Desvern, in Baix Llobregat, and Montferrer and Castellbò, in Alt Urgell, were the municipalities with the highest and lowest household incomes in Catalonia in 2022, respectively, according to data published this Wednesday by Idescat, the statistical agency of the Generalitat (Catalan Government). The difference between the incomes of both municipalities was 144%, meaning that the average household income in the richest municipality is double that of the poorest. At the regional level, Barcelona and the regions of the metropolitan region of the Catalan capital once again occupied the top positions in per capita income.

Eradicating gender inequality is not only a matter of social justice but also of economic efficiency. The significant gender gaps that persist in many areas of our society symbolize the waste of female talent, and have significant costs for the economy as a whole.

One of the most worrying phenomena in western societies is inequality. In general and with all its derivatives, essentially economic, territorial and socio-cultural. Failure to ensure that almost the entire population is within a range of homologous welfare, especially low incomes, is a failure in itself and because of the negative consequences that it entails in the long run for the entire population, whatever their income. Historically, any large-scale conflict demonstrates this. Today, the pandemic and the quest for maximum effectiveness in vaccination are no less starkly in front of our eyes. Either we all move forward, at the pace required by the context of each group, or we will not get ahead. Or at least not efficiently.

The Generalitat has identified 236 vulnerable areas throughout Catalonia. Many are neighbourhoods; others, specific areas of small municipalities that also require special attention from the administration. This list includes everything from the Congost neighbourhood in Granollers or Camp Clar in Tarragona, to the old quarter of Alfarràs, a municipality in Segrià with 2,800 inhabitants.

"Barcelona is more unequal than before. Despite the periods of growth we've had, poverty rates have not gone down", says anthropologist José Mansilla. Most of the most vulnerable areas of Catalonia are concentrated in the metropolitan area, along the Llobregat and Besòs rivers, while in the center of the Catalan capital, with the exception of Raval and Barceloneta, according to Mansilla, there has been a process of gentrification that has driven many low-income residents to the outskirts of the city.