Poverty stalks the land as ultrarich count the spoils
Inequality is rising in Britain and in the world, the inevitable outcome of the workings of our much-praised market economy.
Families struggling to hold things together as wages stagnate, inflation lets rip and energy bills go through the roof will be cheered to hear that at least some British people are doing well out of the crisis.
A report by property consultants Knight Frank has calculated that the number of ‘ultrarich’ people in the UK (defined as those with assets in excess of £22.1m) increased last year by 11 percent to 25,771, doubling the number since 2016.
Britain, where three out of ten children are living in poverty, has the second-fastest rate of growth of ultrarich in the world, second only to the USA.
The ‘country’ with the most ultrarich people per capita is the joke ‘city state’ of Monaco, now home to tax dodger Sir Philip Green. No less than 199 out of Monaco’s total population of 39,000 are classified as ultrarich.
Such is the desperate frenzy to invest in real estate that Monaco’s tinpot ‘monarch’, Prince Albert II, is reportedly supervising a hare-brained $2bn scheme to reclaim 15 acres of land from the sea with a view to luring in yet more of the ultrarich.
As more wealth crystallises at one extremity, the mass of social misery coalesces at the other. There can only be one solution.
