Mhairi Black: ‘Generous’ billionaires won't solve wealth inequality

It’s a noble goal, certainly. Communities around the world are facing unprecedented challenges, from climate breakdown to the inequality crisis. Surely it can only be a good thing that those with unimaginable wealth are choosing to hoard a little bit less of it, and instead put it to use tackling these issues. What is not to love?

I am not saying that I do not support the wealthy giving money away – of course I do. But I think there’s something inherently ominous about a society that allows people to amass so much wealth, while so many are struggling to make ends meet – and the two are connected. We cannot speak about extreme poverty without speaking about extreme wealth. Challenging this gross inequality will involve questioning way in which our economy is operates to benefit a handful of billionaires.

READ MORE: Mhairi Black: Failed Brexit talks a waste of everyone's time

Firstly, we need to talk about tax – or a lack thereof. Facebook paid just £15.8 million in tax in the UK in 2017, despite collecting £1.3bn in UK sales, and Amazon paid only £4.5m in UK tax in the same year, despite recording UK sales of £8.7bn. Our taxes are an important component to creating redistribution and funding vital public services that we benefit from as a society. Why is it the case that massive corporations are able to skimp out on paying taxes to fund these services and then their CEOs expect a pat on the back for giving money away that was in part accrued by not paying their fair share in taxes?

I can’t help but feel the reason so many of these billionaires are suddenly interested in fixing the world’s problems is that they know crises like that of inequality are growing. They hope some headlines about how generous they are will lead to the continuation of policies that have allowed them to amass huge wealth without paying a fair share towards public services.

Oxfam’s landmark report on inequality this year revealed that the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased to $900 billion in the last year. Meanwhile, nearly half of the world’s population live on less than $5.50 a day. It is no coincidence then that the same report uncovered that only four cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from taxes on wealth. Getting the richest 1% to pay just 0.5% extra tax on their wealth could, for example, educate all of the 262 million children out of school. So why are we relying on philanthropy when we could just tax wealth?

And let’s talk about how much these billionaires pay their staff. Philanthropy is often simply described as good because wealthy people are choosing to give away money that they have worked hard for. By implication, this implies that people without much money don’t work hard, which we know is not accurate. Last year, Nicola Sturgeon told Jeff Bezos to pay a real Living Wage for workers, after he had failed to do so, despite staff working long hours and after reports of poor working conditions.

The move prompted Bernie Sanders to tweet in solidarity, saying: “If Scotland can demand that Amazon get off corporate welfare and pay its workers a living wage, then so can the US. Now is the time for people to come together around the world to take on the greed of the oligarchs.”

Wealth inequality has been something that has been discussed a lot over the past year with the Democrats in America taking a swing to the left. Examples of this include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed increased progressive tax rates, and Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax wealth above $50m at 2% a year, with an additional surcharge of 1% on wealth over $1bn. What they are boldly doing is asking the question: is it morally justifiable that people are hoarding billions?

According to an interview of Warren on The View, clips of which were doing the round on Twitter, her tax could relieve 95% of people of their student debt in America, pay for free university tuition, and provide universal childcare.

At the World Economic Forum last year in Davos – essentially a fun weekend retreat for billionaires to discuss being billionaires and opine on the big problems societies face while not being experts on any of the problems – historian Rutger Bregman came under fire for suggesting that the issue actually facing the world was the rich not paying tax. But he’s right.

READ MORE: 23 times Mhairi Black was hilariously brilliant on Twitter

The Times did the maths on this. If Mackenzie Bezos gives away half her fortune, she could still spend $900,000 a day until she was 100. What on God’s earth could you spend £900k on a day for the rest of your life? It’s an obscene amount of money.

My other concern is about whether billionaires are qualified to make decisions around where money goes and how it is spent in areas that they know little about. What does Mark Zuckerberg know about education that lifelong teachers and experts in education don’t? Why is he the person best suited to decide what areas require investment, and not the public servants who are elected by and accountable to the public? Anand Giridharadas covers this issue in his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade Of Changing The World. In an interview with Kara Swisher recently he put it better than I could ever hope to: “But no one has … discredited the entire tao of philanthrocapitalism the way Donald Trump has ...

“It is now inarguable that knowing one industry does not make you an expert, even necessarily on that industry and certainly anything else.”

At a time of increasing inequality after a decade of austerity where the rich have gleefully watched their wealth grow at huge rates and the worst off have paid the price for that growth, we must finally call the experiment of trickle-down economics a failure and look towards ensuring those with unimaginable wealth are paying much, much more.