How the rich become richer, and the poor are driven to the wall

Ever since the first wave of coronavirus pushed countries into a lockdown, the central banks, mainly in the rich countries, printed US $ 9 trillion of surplus money. Well, the underlying objective was to infuse this surplus money into the pandemic hit economies, which had been left gasping for breath.

According to economist Ruchir Sharma, Chief Global Strategist at the Morgan Stanley Investment Management, this pandemic stimulus in turn made the rich add on to their wealth. “Much of that stimulus had gone into financial markets and from there into the net worth of ultra-rich,” he wrote (Financial Times, May 16). The total wealth of the super rich has increased in the same period to somewhere between $ 5 trillion to $ 13 trillion. No wonder, markets are awash with money, while countries are struggling to pull economy out of slump.

The sad irony is that what appears to be an ingenious way to indirectly transfer wealth from public coffers into the pockets of the ultra-rich happened at a time when Brookings estimated that an additional 144 million people globally, in 2020, slipped below the stringently kept poverty line. Using the World Bank and IMF poverty estimates, the calculations show that India has surpassed Nigeria when it comes to having the largest population of people living in extreme poverty. India added another 85 million poor to its existing huge numbers that have somehow been surviving below the poverty line. The devastating second wave of Covid-19 may leave a still bigger dent in poverty estimates.    

But perhaps what we do not realise is that all it requires to eradicate extreme poverty from the globe is US $100 billion, a tiny fraction of the pandemic stimulus that was pumped in to revive the global economy and instead ended up rewarding the billionaires by helping them to amass more wealth. This is not the first time that such astonishing amounts of surplus money have been pumped indirectly into the hands of the super rich. For quite a number of years, central banks in rich countries have been printing surplus money. However, what remains unexplained is how come there is all the money for the rich, but the world is still unable to find enough money to fight poverty.

If only a fraction of the pandemic stimulus had gone to where it was needed -- to remove poverty, the world would have been a much better place to live.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has further widened income inequality taking it to obnoxious levels. In America, the Institute for Policy Study says the combined wealth of its billionaires increased by 44.6 per cent during the pandemic. During the same period an estimated 80 million people lost their jobs. In any case, top 50 super rich in America hold as much wealth as the bottom 165 million. In India, the income inequality is no less glaring. Just to give you an idea, the average farm income as worked out by 2013 National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report, for roughly 50 per cent of the population dependent largely on farming, stands at a paltry Rs 6,426 per month (roughly half of it coming from non-farm activities). That is why protesting farmers have been demanding an assured income by way of an assured price for their produce.

Compare this with what an Oxfam’s ‘Inequality Virus Report’ brings out. The combined wealth of India’s billionaires has risen by 35 per cent during the pandemic, and to explain how the increase would translate in simple terms, the report states that the rise in wealth of just top 11 billionaires alone is enough to pay for MNREGA work for ten years. In any case, the top 1 per cent holds four times the wealth that the bottom 953 million has.  

To understand how an increase in income works wonders for the poor, look at the outcome of this experiment on the feasibility of universal basic income. Two years before the pandemic struck, in early 2018, Foundation for Social Change, a charitable organisation, along with the University of British Columbia in Canada gave $ 7,500 Canadian dollars (or US $ 6,206) to 50 homeless families in the Vancouver region. A year later, during which time the charity kept a tab on how the money was being utilised, the results that emerged were not only astounding, but equally encouraging. More or less same results have been achieved in almost similar kind of studies conducted elsewhere.

Contrary to the public perception wherein it is generally believed that the poor don’t know how to handle money, the results clearly brought out how wisely they made use of the limited financial support, spending it on necessities like food, clothes, housing and other utilities. According to news reports, while the consumption of basic food needs went up by 37 per cent; the poor had actually cut down on drug and alcohol by 39 per cent. By moving fast into housing, these homeless actually worked to ensure a roof over their head. What the study therefore conclusively established is the significance of roti, kapda and makaan for the poor households everywhere in the world, and their strenuous efforts to work towards attaining it. In other words, such petty cash transfers have the potential to uplift the poor from the clutches of poverty.

Instead, we see more money being routed to the rich by way of tax concessions, economic stimulus packages, bank write-offs, bailouts and massive subsidies in the name of incentives for growth to bolster corporation profits with the faulty assumption that some of it will trickle down to the poor and needy. When it comes to giving poor their share, the argument is that by giving surplus money directly into the hands of the poor everyone will have more to spend, and that will lead to higher inflation.  

The economic growth model therefore has been very cleverly designed to help widen income inequality, and make the fat cows still fatter. The poor are expected to fend for themselves. #

Growth should take the poor into account. The Tribune. May 22, 2021 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/growth-should-take-the-poor-into-account-256674?fbclid=IwAR3OX6dgsHwmg3kBgPxtksZkQKxPaSjOxe9v10eK0wxIlMXZskwip2RXvAE

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A Rethinking in Economics is Urgently Needed.

This biased economic thinking has to change. While farm loan waiver is despised at, corporate bad debt write-off is believed to lead to economic growth ! 

Former US Labour Secretary Robert Reich tweeted the other day: “America’s richest 1 per cent now owns half the value of the US stock market. The richest 10 per cent own 92 percent. So when Trump says the stock market is the economy, know who he’s really talking about.” Well, Trump is not the only head of a State, who believes that a booming stock market is a reflection of the state of the economy, the list of such leaders is pretty long. This shows how effectively credit rating agencies have drilled the idea into our minds.

Even on a day when India’s Finance Minister rises to present the annual budget all eyes are on the stock markets. When in Sept last, Nirmala Sitharaman announced a slew of measures to build up domestic demand at times of a slowdown; she presented a tax concession bonanza of Rs 1.45-lakh crore to the industry, reducing the basic corporate tax rate to 22 per cent, the celebrations next day were observed on the stock markets. Shares jumped by as much as 5 per cent, the highest in 10 years as some media reports indicated. If only the same amount had been allocated for providing more money into the hands of the poor, stock markets would have remained subdued but perhaps more demand could have been generated thereby refuelling the economy.

Even now, when globally the pandemic has left economies bleeding, the stock markets are on a Bull Run prompting Nobel laureate Paul Krugman to say there is something terribly going wrong. This is also evident from the fact that the top 614 of America’s billionaires increased their wealth by over $ 584 billion between Mar 18 and June 17 while more than 45.5 million Americans joined the unemployment queue in the same period. While, much of the wealth increase is related to the Wall Street, economic bailouts and stimulus packages have helped transfer more money into the pockets of the stinking rich. On top of it, is the ‘printing’ of surplus money in the form of Quantitative Easing (QE). According to Fitch Ratings, global QE asset purchases are expected to touch $ 6 trillion in 2020. By bolstering the financial and property markets, this helps the rich become richer. But rarely have I seen the universities deliberating on the need to make QE work for the people. Why does it invariably fail to become part of the economics curricula or be a part of media debates is beyond my understanding?

In India, while the industry is lobbying hard to seek further tax concessions to the tune of Rs 2.50-lakh crore by bringing the corporate tax slab to a low of 15 per cent, an Oxfam study had earlier pointed to a creation of 117 million jobs if the richest 1 per cent globally were to be made to pay an additional tax of just 0.5 per cent over the next ten years. If we look at it economically, this makes terrific sense. To promote inclusive and sustainable growth, UNCSD tells us that creating employment and decent job opportunities will ultimately drive progress. But then why mainline economists have invariably failed to demand imposition of a slightly higher corporate tax if it could lead to such huge employment opportunities, still continues to baffle me.

In the past 30 years, says Bernie Sanders, the wealth of top 1 percent has gone up by $ 22.65 trillion, while the wealth of bottom 50 percent has gone down by $776 billion. “This growing wealth inequality is morally obscene,” he regretted. Inequality is not only related to wealth accumulation, but also stems for an ideological bias. In India, a former Chief Economic Advisor had once said that writing-off corporate bad loans leads to economic growth. The question that wasn’t asked is how come when both the corporate and farmers draw loans from the same banks, writing-off of corporate bad debt leads to economic growth whereas farm loan waiver upsets the national balance sheet? Similarly, why should nations continue to blindly pursue the outdated economic theory that workforce from agriculture needs to be shifted to the urban centres, primarily to ensure that companies don’t have to pay higher wages? Is it not a reflection of an ideological position?

Similarly, why is that any additional investment in agriculture, public health and education is seen as a drag on the economy? For instance, why is it that a sledge hammer blow of a pandemic made the government realise the importance of public health. “The public sector has an inescapable obligation towards health. The private sector alone cannot fulfil it. Of course, there will be public-private partnerships. Over the next five years, the Centre alone should be able to at least spend 2.1 per cent of the GDP on health,” N K Singh, chairman of the 15^th Finance Commission recently said. Whatever the reason, even in normal times the emphasis on public health should not have diminished. But if only the reports of the finance commission for instance were deliberated and hotly debated in the class rooms will the future economists not get a peep into how our financial policies lays the framework for declining public sector investments in social sectors, and also lead to the kind of stark socio-economic inequalities.

Still, the bigger lesson is that if Britain can spend 9.6 per cent of its GDP on public health, why should India not try to catch up with at least 6 per cent to begin with? Why should public sector investment in agriculture continue to hover around 0.4 per cent of the GDP (between 2011-12 and 2017-18) when the sector employs roughly 50 per cent population? Why should the poor continue to live on the margins while the rich are routinely provided with massive bank write-offs, tax cuts and subsidies packed in the name of incentives for growth? Why should we have socialism for the rich, and leave poor to the market forces? Why should growth economics come in conflict with nature?     

These are not difficult questions, but need a rethinking in economics. #

Incentives for the rich, raw deal for the poor. The Tribune. July 13, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/incentives-for-the-rich-raw-deal-for-the-poor-112198?fbclid=IwAR2Ih8KFiZ2oQluyebEEYjktGfixk19VaH28aXx-8lBEjcfdA0qMAncAV-g 

READ MORE - A Rethinking in Economics is Urgently Needed.