Imagine Something Different

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

“Imagine if we did something different.”

Those were just six words out of close to 7,000 that President Barack Obama spoke during his State of the Union address. He was addressing both houses of Congress, which are controlled by his bitter foes. Most importantly, though, he was addressing the country. Obama employed characteristically soaring rhetoric to deliver his message of bipartisanship. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong,” he assured us.

From whose lives has the shadow of crisis passed? And for whom is this Union strong?

“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” Obama asked. “Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”

Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, weighed in on the question, releasing a report the day before the speech called “Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More.” Oxfam analyzed data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014 and the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires to determine some shocking facts about global inequality.

First, it found that, as of 2014, the 80 richest individuals in the world are wealthier than the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. This bears repeating: The 80 wealthiest people, a group that could fit on a bus, control more wealth than 3.5 billion people. The wealthy are not only accumulating more wealth, but they are getting it faster. Between 2009 and 2014, Oxfam reports, the wealth of those 80 richest people in the world doubled. This, while the rest of the world was mired in the Great Recession, with rampant unemployment and people’s life savings wiped out. If current trends continue, Oxfam notes, by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the world’s population will control more wealth than the bottom 99 percent.

One way the wealthy manage to increase their wealth, Oxfam reports, is through lobbying. The report identifies two industries, finance/insurance and pharmaceutical/health care, as major sources of wealth for the richest, and as principal founts of political contributions. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by these industries annually to shape public policy and safeguard profits.

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