OH, WHAT A LOVELY PANDEMIC

It has been a great pandemic for the rich, but everyone else has suffered.

ALTHOUGH THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic and its corresponding economic crisis might have dealt a hammer blow to the lives of tens of millions of people around the world, its impact on the world's wealthy has been minimal. In fact they have prospered. Hugely. For the world's wealthy it  has been a lovely pandemic. Just as in any war when the owners of the means of production are laughing all the way to the bank while the working class dies on the battlefield, the world's wealthy elite have been cavorting, like Scrooge McDuck, in a ever bigger mountain of cash.

According to Bloomberg the richest 500 people on the planet added nearly $2 trillion to their combined wealth in 2020, accumulating a total net worth of $7.6 trillion. That's a figure so large its hard to grasp in real terms. In stark contrast, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs and plunged into poverty. Such is the depth of this economic crisis that the United Nations has warned that the pandemic, unless something substantial  is done, is likely to tip a further 200 million people into poverty over the course of the next several years.

But its been a good pandemic for the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk's personal fortune grew to the point that he is now the second richest person in the world, relegating Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to third place. Bezos remains top of the league. He added some $7 billion to his wealth in 2020, and is now worth a staggering $190 billion. He benefited because  of a growing dependency on online shopping due to the prevalence of the virus.

And while more and more New Zealanders are struggling to keep their heads above water and the lines at the food banks continue to lengthen, New Zealand's wealthy have continued to prosper. New Zealand's richest man, Graeme Hart, made a whopping $3.4 billion in 2020. But he's not only one who has prospered.

While all the talk from the political establishment , including from our Labour Government, has been about the great economic 'reset' and 'rebuilding better', the exact opposite has proved to be true. We have seen the retrenching of the status quo and the deepening of already chronic levels of poverty and inequality.

In 2008 the financial crash saw those responsible for the crash, the banks, the finance houses and the property speculators, actually grow bigger than they were before the crash occurred. In 2020 the exact same process  has began again with what amounts to the biggest single rise in inequality  since the Great Depression.

A new report from Oxfam concludes that 'the deep divide between the rich and the poor is proving as deadly as the virus...Rigged economies are funnelling wealth to a rich elite who are riding out the pandemic in luxury while those on the frontline of the pandemic - shop assistants, healthcare workers, and market vendors  are struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table.'

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, our Labour Government shows no interest in tilting the field, even slightly,  toward the ninety-nine percent. While it has  funnelled plenty of cash in the direction of business interests there has been next to nothing for everyone else. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wants to spin 2021 as 'The Year of the Vaccine' it is, for most people,  going to be a year of economic struggle. But, of course, there is  no PR mileage  to get out of homeless people and queues outside the food banks, so Ardern will try to boost her profile by associating herself with the vaccine rollout.