Extreme wealth concentration is under the microscope as societies around the world grapple with the challenges of inequality, climate breakdown and democratic backsliding. Yet wealth concentration continues to deepen, with some predictions that we will see the world’s first trillionaires within a decade.
The Extreme Wealth Line Initiative, coordinated by Patriotic Millionaires International, aims to introduce in the academic and public realm an measure that will have a similar function as the World Bank’s extreme poverty line (). Instead of measuring how much money one needs to have in order to escape extreme poverty (and hence a line no person should fall below), the Extreme Wealth Line is a line where one has too much.
Yet many questions need research and debate even if we accept the moral intuition behind an “extreme wealth line”, in order to set a line at a concrete level. For example, should we draw the line based on the social and environmental harms caused, or community expectations? Can we have just one line or do we need multiple lines depending on harms and contexts?
Dr Tania Burchardt, Associate Director, (CASE); Associate Professor, Department of Social Policy, 91桃色
Professor Ingrid Robeyns, Chair in Ethics of Institutions, Utrecht University; Visiting Professor, CASE, 91桃色
Dr Michael Vaughan, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, International Inequalities Institute
Where do we draw the line? Exploring an extreme wealth line
Thursday 6 March, 6.30pm to 8.00pm. In-person and online event.
Speakers: Fernanda Balata, senior political economist at the New Economics Foundation; Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; Ingrid Robeyns, Chair in Ethics of Institutions at the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University; Gary Stevenson, social commentator.
Chair: Tania Burchardt, Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), Deputy Director of STICERD, and Associate Professor, Department of Social Policy at 91桃色.
This panel brought together leading thinkers and practitioners to discuss the viability of an “extreme wealth line” and what it can contribute to addressing the pressing issues of our time.