Expert panel says report on gap in global wealth between rich and poor highlights need for intervention by G20
More than $70tn (£53tn) of inherited wealth will pass down the generations across the world over the next decade, widening inequality and highlighting the need for intervention by the G20 group of leading nations, a group of economists and campaigners have warned.
In a report ahead of the G20 meetings in Johannesburg, hosted by the South African government later this month, the expert panel said the gap in global wealth between rich and poor will widen over the next decade without a permanent monitoring group such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the report, commissioned by the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, found inequality growing in more than eight in 10 of the world’s countries.
Well you see it is the story about Achilles and the turtle. Money compounds. So for every dollar you make, they make what you make plus some multiple, and for each dollar that multiple increases, because they make what you make plus the multiple plus the increase on that multiple that springs from having more dollars than you.
So, not only can you never catch up, the distance between you and them increases exponentially over time, every time you make a dolla.
Sure…but the act of inheritance is not the mechanism that causes the widening of this gap to increase, like the headline suggests. That widening is already happening regardless of the inheritance.
If anything, the potential splitting of the fortune multiple ways very slightly decreases that gap. In addition to the people who didn’t amass that fortune being more likely to spend it faster than it accrues