Page 6 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.73, # 2, 2016, pp. 4-20

Bangladesh? Obviously he will be the 'King'. His wishes will be the law of the land.
Does it sound too far-fetched?
Concentration of wealth also means concentration of power -- political and
social, privileges, and opportunities. The reverse is also true. If you don't have any
wealth, you have no power, no privileges, no opportunities.
We can raise another question. Who will get how much of the additional
wealth to be generated in the next two years? Will top one percent get more than
half of the additional wealth, making them own much more than fifty percent of the
total wealth reducing the share of the bottom fifty percent of the people? Bottom
fifty percent will continue to be in the losing side as long as the present capitalist
system remains in force. Under this system concentration of wealth will remain an
ongoing non-stop process.
That's the point I am drawing your attention to. The richest people are not
necessarily bad people, as popularly imagined. They are not busy engineering the
non-stop expansion of their wealth by 'stealing' from the bottom people. It is the
system which does it for them. Wealth is like a magnet. The bigger the magnet the
greater is its pulling force. It draws smaller magnets towards it. That's how the
economic system is built. People with no magnet find it difficult to attract anything
to them. If they somehow own some tiny magnets, retaining them becomes difficult
for them. Bigger ones pull them to themselves. Unidirectional forces of
concentration of wealth keep changing the shape of wealth-pyramid making its base
thinner and its peak narrower and higher, ultimately looking like a thinning column
rising out of a thin but large base.
These are horrifying realities which are taking shape minute by minute, while
we are busy with our daily chores. For example the temperature of our planet quietly
reached 1 degree Celsius, above the temperature during the industrial revolution,
only a few months back, without drawing much attention. If we don't take heed of
such major milestones our planet will keep getting warmer and warmer, and at one
point we will reach the point of no return. Had it not been for the dedicated scientists
and activists, who worked day and night over years, to galvanize a citizen's network
and mobilize the governments forging a collective decision on global warming?
Wealth-concentration is as dangerous as environmental threat. One is a physical
threat against the existence of the planet; another is a threat against humanity,
against the right of the people to live with dignity and peace pursuing higher ideals.
If the collective efforts of citizens led by committed group of scientists and
activists from all sections of society could make us aware of climate danger, I
believe by following the same roadmap we can galvanize forces to protect humanity
from the danger of its destruction through ever-intensifying wealth-concentration.

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