Capitalism

See, eg, Occupy together website, 2012, <http://www.occupytogether.org/>.

The Economist recently published a report detailing the Gini coefficient of a sample of countries, see ‘Poverty, Inequality and Redistribution’ 17 January 2012, The Economist Online, <http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/focus-2>. In addition, it is worth noting that presently, there exist 1226 billionaires in the world whose combined worth is $4.6 trillion – see The World's Billionaires (7 March 2012) Forbes <http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/>.

Estimates vary but it is highly probable that the richest 1 per cent of the world's population own more than half of the world's wealth, and the richest 10 per cent own nearly 90 per cent of global assets — see <http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/discussion-papers/2008/en_GB/dp2008-03/_files/78918010772127840/default/dp2008-03.pdf>.

As an illustration of this hypothetical, in Australia the average wage is approximately $70 000 per annum, while the CEOs of the big four banks earn on average approximately $10 million pa each.

Statistics like these prompted Occupy Wall Street, the original Occupy movement, to adopt the slogan ‘We are the 99%’. See <http://occupywallst.org>.

Judt Tony , Ill Fares the Land (Penguin, 2011) 2.