Non-fiction

The golden age is slowly fading, the gap between poor and rich is increasing, the United States and Great Britain are transforming from “showcases of humanity” the focus of poverty. We are talking about the conclusions of the UN and the world's leading economists. The report was recently published “On Inequality in the World” (“Inequality in the world”) which they worked on further 100 economists from different countries. This team was led by the Frenchman Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling book “Capital in the 21st century”. The statistics collected by him and his colleagues demonstrate unequivocally that the capitalism that citizens of the former Soviet Union prayed for thirty years ago no longer exists in nature.
Today's capitalism is much more likely to resemble the novels of Charles Dickens: the rich get richer, the poor become impoverished. Both live in ghettos: the rich in surveilled areas, the others in public housing. Social elevators, if they work, they only move downwards.
The authors of the study analyzed the growth rate of incomes in different segments of the population over the last few years 36 years. E’ it emerged that starting from 1980 1% of humanity has come to possess the 27% of world wealth, while the 4% of wealth is held by 0,001% of the world population, that is, by the 76 thousand richest people in the world.

At the same time the growth rate of incomes of “middle class” it has slowed down and today it has almost stopped. If the current trend of impoverishment of the masses and enrichment of the super rich continues, In the 2050 lo 0,15% of the world's population will possess the wealth of the entire world middle class. Basically, this means that by 2050 there will be no middle class: it will be swallowed up by the poor.

Piketty's report highlights an interesting regularity. Economic inequality is growing fastest in the world's major economies. The success of the radiant billionaires is repaid by the squeezed and impoverished population of the developed countries.
In the 1980 1% of US citizens owned the 22% of national wealth. Today the same percentage of rich people already own the 39%. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos added 33 billion dollars to his fortune last year and last November he was proclaimed the richest man in the world with a total fortune estimated at 100,3 billions of dollars.

More or less the same picture is taking shape in Britain. In the 1984 the super rich 1% held the 15% of national wealth, now the 22%. Over the last thirty years, says Piketty, the leading countries of the Western world have reached the same level of economic inequality as the countries of Africa and the Middle East, traditionally disadvantaged in this sense.
The record growth in the assets of 1% of the population is paid for by the majority of the working class: An epidemic of poverty has broken out in the stereotypical countries of well-being. La Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity that has been fighting poverty in the UK for over a hundred years, he deals with 14 millions of poor British citizens. This number represents one fifth of the country's total population. In “difficult conditions”, according to the institution, they live 4 million children and almost 2 millions of elderly people.

The situation cannot even be reversed by unemployment at historic lows for England. An increasingly larger portion of the salary is lost to increasingly expensive bills and rents, while all savings are consumed by inflation. This situation does not allow citizens to accumulate a decent pension. Buying your own home is becoming increasingly prohibitive for workers: Real estate prices have made home ownership a true luxury.

The US Census Bureau counts people as poor 41 millions of Americans (12,7% of the population), however, many sociologists and NGOs believe this data is underestimated. At the same time the 32,6% of the total number of poor are children and among the homeless the percentage of children is 21%.

Population impoverishment in America has become so severe that monitoring by the United Nations special rapporteur on poverty and human rights issues Philip Alston began in December. Alston promised to analyze how poverty affects the rights of Americans “taking into account the importance that the American administration attributes to the issue of human rights in its foreign policy.” His trip to the States included California with its homeless people, West Virginia with unemployed miners, Alabama with the long-standing poverty of people of color and the State of Washington, where the working class suddenly became poorer.
Finally Alston issued a report, some passages of which recall the dark times of “Great Depression” and of “wild capitalism”:

“I saw open-air toilets at the doors of houses where the government does not provide sewerage… I saw people who had lost all their teeth, since medical insurance for the poorest does not include dental care… I have seen families cry for their loved ones who died from an opioid overdose.”

Alston compared the United States to other developed countries. It turned out that the gap between the poor and the rich in America is the largest in the world. The US is also among the leaders in terms of youth impoverishment: il 25% of young Americans are considered needy in the face of the 13% of peers from other developed countries. Worse still, Americans now have a shorter life expectancy, they get sick more often: this trend is only getting worse.

At the same time, many myths and stereotypes have been debunked. For example, the one according to which the poor are exclusively people of color “lazy” who live on social benefits. In reality the white beggars are 8 million more than African-Americans. Most of them have been looking for work for years, but automated production dashed their hopes. But also those who have a job, no longer guaranteed a dignified life.
Walmart workers told Alston that at the supermarkets of the world's largest retail chain they receive such a small salary that they can only get by on coupons for free products..

In Russia people think that the standard of living in the West is so high that complaints about poverty are a consumer whim “spoiled”. Furthermore, poverty in countries that symbolize well-being is not as shocking as it is in Africa or India and goes unnoticed before the eyes of tourists.

But there is one detail. The people in the streets are dressed decently because clothes are sold at rock-bottom prices during the sales. Pensioners can afford a cappuccino or coffee at the bar, but their homes are without heating for months: it's too expensive. The hidden nature of this poverty does not make it any less painful. In the most advanced countries of the world, millions of people regularly suffer from hunger and cold. Meat disappears from their menu, there isn't enough money to buy it. Their credit cards are deep in the red and they have no way to pay off their debt.

We are used to making fun of the English, who start to worry as soon as it snows. Because we don't understand that for most families, the cold involves enormous heating costs. To save money, pensioners don't turn it on at night, and in the morning they find them frozen. In the 2016 40thousands of people died this way. On average during the winter every 7 minutes an elderly Englishman dies from the cold in his own home. E’ the expression even appeared “heating poverty” (“fuel poverty”), that is striking 2,3 million English families and 800 thousand Scottish.

Millions of Brits are being forced to get free food parcels from food banks. The largest network of these charities is The Trussel Trust. Last year the foundation distributed 1,18 millions of kits with food for three days, including 446 thousand children.

In the first half of 2017 the number of deliveries of these parcels has increased in several regions since 12% al 30%, in December the foundation asked its donors for greater efforts, warning that otherwise he would not be able to give free food to the needy for Christmas.
In this context, near Christmas, the Independent newspaper launched the project “Aiuta i bambini affamati”. The discussion is not about African children, but ordinary English children. Often all the food they get during the day comes from free meals in schools and kits provided by charities. An Independent journalist bitterly recalled Dickens after visiting one of the food banks:

“Unlike Oliver Twist, the children we met at the food bank didn't ask “moreover!”. They seemed happy to at least receive something.”

The author's opinion may not coincide with the position of the editorial staff.