Muhammad Yunus - A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions

I VE DEVOTED MOST OF MY life to working for the poorest people, particularly the poorest women, trying to remove the hurdles they face in their efforts to improve their lives. Through the tool known as microcredit, Grameen Bank, which I launched in my home country of Bangladesh in 1976, makes capital available to poor villagers, especially women. Microcredit has since unleashed the entrepreneurial capabilities of over 300 million poor people around the world, helping to break the chains of poverty and exploitation that have enslaved them.

The impact of microcredit in enabling millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty helped to expose the shortcomings of a traditional banking system that denied its services to those who needed them mostthe worlds poorest people. This is just one of many interrelated problems suffered by the poor: lack of institutional services, lack of clean drinking water and sanitary facilities, lack of health care, inadequate education, substandard housing, no access to energy,

T HE TROUBLES PLAGUING POOR PEOPLE throughout the world reflect an even broader economic and social problemthe problem of rising inequality caused by continuous wealth concentration.

Inequality has been a hot subject in politics for ages. Many powerful political and social movements and many ambitious initiatives have been launched in recent years that attempt to address this problem. Much blood has been shed over the issue. But the problem is as far from being solved as ever. In fact, plenty of evidence shows that, in recent decades, the problem of the ever-expanding gap in individual wealth has been getting worse. As the economy grows, so does the concentration of wealth. This trend has continued and even accelerated despite the positive effects of national and international development programs, income redistribution programs, and other efforts to alleviate the problems of low-income people. Microcredit and other programs have helped many lift themselves out of poverty, but at the same time the richest have continued to claim a greater share of the worlds wealth.

The trend toward ever-increasing wealth concentration is dangerous because it threatens human progress, social cohesion, human rights, and democracy. A world in which wealth is concentrated in a few hands is also a world in which political power is controlled by a few and used by them for their own benefit.

As wealth concentration increases within countries, it also increases between nations. So even as millions of poor people work to lift themselves out of poverty, the bulk of the worlds wealth continues to be concentrated in half a dozen countries.

As the wealth gap and the power gap grow, mistrust, resentment, and anger inevitably deepen, pushing the world toward social upheaval and increasing the likelihood of armed conflicts among nations.

Oxfam is an international confederation of eighteen nonprofit organizations that are focused on the alleviation of global poverty. Experts at Oxfam have been studying the problem of increasing wealth concentration. The data they have uncovered are truly horrifying.

In 2010, Oxfam reported that the worlds richest 388 people owned more wealth than the entire bottom half of the world populationa group that included an estimated 3.3 billion human beings. At the time, this was considered a startling statistic, and it was reported as such around the world. But in the years since then, the problem has grown much worse. In January 2017, Oxfam announced that the ultraprivileged group that owns wealth exceeding that of the bottom half of the worlds population has shrunk to just eight peopleeven as the number of people in the bottom half has grown to about 3.6 billion.and Jeff Bezos, as well as a few from other countries, such as Amancio Ortega of Spain and Carlos Slim Hel of Mexico.

This information is so unbelievable that it takes time to absorb. We feel like asking many more questions. What happens to the social fabric in a country where a handful of people control the bulk of the national wealth? When we get to the point where one person controls a huge portion of a countrys wealth, what is to prevent that person from imposing his will on the nation? Implicitly or explicitly, his wishes will become the law of the land.

It could easily happen in a low-income country like Bangladesh. But we now realize it can also happen in a wealthy country like the United States. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders frequently pointed out that the richest 0.1 percent of Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percenta claim supported by solid research data from sources like the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

It is dangerous for a country to allow so much wealth and power to be concentrated in a few hands. Perhaps its not surprising that the US presidential race ended with the election of a man with practically no credentials as a national leader other than his vast personal wealth.

M ANY SPECIFIC FEATURES OF TODAYS financial and political landscape have contributed to the problem of wealth concentration. But the basic reality is that wealth concentration is an all-but-inevitable, nonstop process under the present economic system. Contrary to one popular belief, the richest people are not necessarily evil manipulators who have rigged the system through bribery or corruption. In reality, the current capitalist system works on their behalf. Wealth acts like a magnet. The biggest magnet naturally draws smaller magnets toward it. Thats how the present economic system is built. And most people give this system their tacit support. People envy the very rich, but they usually dont attack them. Young children are encouraged to try to become wealthy themselves when they grow up.