50% for 2%, 1% for 50%

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth and the poorer half own barely 1%.

That is the conclusion of a study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the UN University.

Most studies look at income, not accumulated wealth. Of course, income inequality is also growing, but the study concludes that inequality is even sharper in wealth than in annual income. The study is based on data for the year 2000. In the meantime, wealth and income inequality has no doubt increased even more.

This trend will continue, but it cannot continue indefinitely. Karl Marx already noticed this trend more than a century ago. The dispossessed will ultimately overthrow the rich. Because half of the world's population cannot live and consume with only 1% of all the wealth, while 2% of the world's population is wasting half of its wealth.

Building socialism, the first stage of communism, on the basis of feudalist societies in Russia and China didn't work. But the forces of inequality and alienation are rising still further.

The future will show that Karl Marx was right after all.