The Toxicity of Inequality: Revisiting Ill Fares the Land — Part 3

“Graffiti on an old brick wall reads “until debt tear us apart”” by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

That a handful of families now possess 50% of the world’s wealth — and the bulk of increased wealth goes to a small percentage of the already obscenely rich — appears to be accepted as some sort of natural feature of the planet; as a simple byproduct of capitalism. It’s as if nothing can change that the world’s tallest waterfall is the Angel Falls in Venezuela and nothing can change the fact that the bulk of the planet’s wealth is owned and controlled by ten (or twelve or eight) families.

Of course, as long as neoliberal unregulated capitalism persists, little can change. Inequality will persist and grow. And this level of inequality — of wealth, not waterfall size — is another throwback to the 20th century. As Judt says at the start of the first chapter of Ill Fares the Land:

All around us we see a level of individual wealth unequaled since the early years of the 20th century……The wealthy, like the poor, have always been with us. But relative to everyone else, they are today wealthier and more conspicuous than at any time in living memory. Private privilege is easy to understand and describe. It is rather harder to convey the depths of public squalor into which we have fallen. (pages 11–12)

What does it mean to talk about public squalor? Judt isn’t referring to the growing number…