GLOBALISATION AND THE NEO-LIBERAL OFFENSIVE/17have been lost in Indonesia, 1.7 million in Thailand and 1 million in
Malaysia.
GROWING INEQUALITY IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF
WEALTH AND A DROP IN WORKING-CLASS WAGES
The unequal distribution of wealth has been greatly accentuated.
There has been a pronounced drop in revenue for those who are
dependent on waged work, for those who work the land and for those
condemned to unemployment. Those who live off revenues from
capital, on the other hand, amass an ever growing share of new
wealth. In the 30 years from 1960 to 1990, there was a doubling in
the ratio of inequality in the way wealth was shared out between the
richest and poorest sectors of the world's population. The wealthiest
20 per cent of the planet's inhabitants earn more than 150 times the
income of the poorest 20 percent (UNDP, 1992).
According to the United Nations Development Programme, 3.5
billion people taken together hold only 5.6 per cent of total global
wealth. The richest 358 people on the planet have an accumulated
fortune greater than the total annual wages of 45 per cent of the
world's poorest inhabitants (2.3 billion people) taken together
(UNDP, 1996). 'This is a comparison between assets and income, but
if a comparison of assets were possible, it would be even more striking.
Of course, the assets of the very poor are usually worth much less
than their annual income' (UNDP, 1996).
In the Third World
According to the World Bank, 1.3 billion people live on less than SI
per day, which means they live below the line of absolute poverty.
The World Bank has arbitrarily set SI as the threshold for absolute
poverty in all Third World countries outside Latin America, where it
is set at $2. Yet what would be the statistical impact of bringing this
measure more into line with the actual cost of living (or, rather, of
survival in this case)? If it were increased to S3 or S4 per day, for
example, it would provide a more accurate gauge of the real situation
of poverty and deprivation experienced by the majority of the
population in Third World countries.
The World Bank, however, has elected to obscure this harsh reality.