The state of corporate power 2012
Date: 27 January 2012
Yesterday David Cameron took the stage in Davos yesterday to push his outdated agenda of deregulation, liberalisation and slashing of workers right as the solution to the world’s problems, to the applause of the gathered representatives of the world’s 1 per cent. Meanwhile, the Transnational Institute published a set of infographics that tell a completely different story.
They show extreme wealth and income disparities with 0.001% of the world’s population, or just 10.9 million individuals, controlling two-thirds of the worlds GDP, while 2.5 billion people survive on less than $2 a day. The wealth they control, $47.2 trillion, could pay for climate change adaptation costs for the next 190 years or clean water for the world’s people for the next 1,423 years.
They show the close ties between the corporate and political elites, with the architects of neoliberal globalisation like Alan Greenspan, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and Larry Summers sitting on the boards of giant corporations such as JP Morgan, Deutshe Bank and Haliburton. And they show that tax evasion costs 145 countries $3.1 trillion annually, enough to fund full immunisations for 120 million children.
These facts are not coincidences. They are a direct result of the kinds of failed policies that Cameron is so enthusiastically pushing in Davos. The kinds of policies that we at the World Development Movement have been campaigning against for over 40 years.
