5% and 90

5% and 90

It’s not a good statistic, 5% and 90 if you are a person who believes in equity, especially when you consider this number in relation to ownership and wealth. In fact, if you consider this statistic in any aspect of life it is not exactly fair.

It has been suggested by many on an approximation that 5% of people own 90% of property and wealth. In some instances and in some situations that statistic is even worse, with 1% owning 99%. How can that be morally right? Unless of course it is the state that owns something that is equally shared amongst all people irrespective of their ability to pay. But then again, shouldn’t all things be means tested. For instance, it is irrational that I should receive the same amount of child benefit as other friends with two children of school age or below when they are on the borderline of surviving on their salaries and I am relatively affluent.

I wonder how many other things in life have the same statistic? 5% of the people have 90% of contentment? 5% of children have 90% of educational resources? 5% of women have 90% of the fun? 5% of guys have 90% of the luck?

But in economic terms 5% of the population owning 90% of the wealth is abhorrent. It’s not like the majority have even worked for such iniquitous distribution. All they have done is be born into it, and managed it according to the vastness of the sum, thus being able to perpetuate the statistic as they pass it forward to the next generation of folk who never have to understand what it is like to go without.

Sometimes the statistic is so horrific that it is almost unbelievable. How can we have got to such a situation in our country that in the 21^st century this insane distribution of wealth is still a prevalent and real statistic? Are we really still living with monetary feudalism that should have vanished in Medieval times? Look at our rulers today – David and Gideon are hardly from the Broadwater Farm estate are they? The rich continue to get richer and there is a huge gap between the prospects of a teenager on a council estate in Tottenham than a silver-spooned Etonian from the Home Counties. And what is worse is that we just take that as the natural way of being. Nobody ever seems to want to challenge the society that we have accepted as the Way; be it to do with distribution of wealth or the model family Way or the insistence on academic qualifications of the highest order being the only definition of intelligence.

What a hopeless world we live in.

The irony, of course, is there are plenty of alternatives, and also alternatives that have been around for thousands of years. Take a healthy dose of Marxism together with some enlightened Eastern philosophies, mixed in with some radical thought about economics, the importance of communities in child-rearing and the value of oneself, and maybe the world would be a different place.

I have to profess at this point to being quite ignorant about economics other than the small amount of informed reading I have done on the subject and a gut instinct as to what seems fair and right. However, this ignorance does not suppress my interest in the subject. I merely accept that I do not understand it all and I certainly cannot fathom how we are still in a situation where 5% of the population have such a hold on the massive majority of the wealth.

Take a small town in West Wales as a micro example of a macro problem. In the 1970s we used to joke about the monopoly that one family had over the food outlets in the town. The entire ice-cream merchandise was owned by this one family, including all the ice-cream vans on the beach, excepting the corporate occasional sales from companies such as Wall’s and Nestle. They also owned the only Fish and Chip shop in town at that time. There was no alternative.

And as if we had all been brainwashed, despite other food outlets opening over the decades, we still tend to give our custom to the established places as though someone has placed a microchip in our brains to say that there still is no alternative. But of course, that is how monopolies work.

Today, I look around the place and realise once more that the 5% rule works here as much as anywhere. People in this town with money don’t tend to own one property or one business. They own the lot! Well, not quite the lot but it certainly seems that they have a disproportionate amount of wealth in comparison with the number of residents in the town.

For instance, there is one family who own a complete parade of grand Georgian houses at the far end of town. Mentioning to one family member that I had always loved the red-roofed house that is perched high above the town, she stated that her sister and brother in law own this property and have done so since 1960, expanding it to the point where you wouldn’t get much change from £1.5 million if it came on the open market today. Further still, I mentioned where I had been staying, and yes, the family had invested in a few apartments in that block of flats over the years too.

Another family, I discovered from another friend in town, had bought a whole series of six-floored properties in the 1920s and they all still remained in the same family to this day; perfectly brilliant houses, occasionally let to the plebs but essentially still with the minority of wealthy. My friend herself had never mentioned that she too owned not only by favourite house in the town but also the property next door; two houses joined together in a fabulous location, never one.

Money breeds money. However there are others who have earned it through hard graft. One man set himself up in business at the age of sixteen, finding a market as yet untouched for all the tourists entering the town. Once he had made sufficient money, he bought a pub and then another one and then a couple of restaurants and then a shop and then some property that he could let. And so it goes on.

A different family essentially hold a monopoly on the boats and the fishing vessels. Nobody, or very few, own just one thing. And of course, they are all interrelated, without being incestuous you understand.

People who turn up with money or try to start a business in this town from the outside are spurned and mistrusted. It has to be something very special or the person involved has to be someone special otherwise the hands will turn and twist them out of business. They all need, even if it is subconsciously, to keep their hands on that 90%.

Meanwhile, the youth on the streets of the town have nowhere to go. The drugs situation is not dire but it is pretty well-established. There is abject poverty in certain parts of the town, carefully tucked away in the outer reaches so that we tourists cannot see the real problems of this town that is only really alive for a few weeks in the year.

And then there are the lazy property owners who think merely of themselves insisting there is no society only the needs of themselves and their nearest and dearest. In days gone by, the town used to close at 5.30 but reopen at 7.00 until about 10pm. Why? Because they were greedy for our custom but also because it gave the town some life in the summer season when people were wandering the streets with nothing to do.

Now, the place closes at 5.30 on the dot. The ice-cream parlour stays open till 9.00 on the dot, and only till that time during six weeks of the year. This place could be a real retrospective brilliance; a place where local and touring teenagers could hang out and enjoy themselves, but the owner doesn’t need to do anything because he earns enough. So why should he bother to be altruistic?

This sort of existence is replicated across the country and indeed globally. There is no need for extra work if it not going to immediately benefit oneself, and the immediacy is another issue. What is the point in investing if me and mine are going to do the work for others in the future to reap the benefit? I used to hear that at school when we were fund-raising. Why should I stick my hand in my pocket when my children are in the latter part of their time at school? They won’t benefit from a new playground or a redesigned gymnasium. Me, me, me and now, now, now.
Perhaps there is much to be said for dictatorship if it is altruistic in nature.
Can you have an altruistic dictator? I think I might offer myself as a candidate on a trial run.

The 5% and the 90% may not be understood and seen by all but injustice is staring us in the face. Those young people who rioted through city streets last week may not be able to verbalise all of this, mainly because they have not received the type of education that actively encourages them to think, but instinctively, I think they know. I think injustice can be felt, even when you are oblivious to it. Those young people may not have known why they were doing what they were doing but something within them felt that things were not right. They didn’t go for the big expensive shops in Regent Street to bombard with their feet and fists. They went with the known, and the known that they look on daily, knowing that they cannot have. Primark was raided in many a town; the place where you can empty a stack of shelves with £50 and still have change in your pocket. Why?

Perhaps it is not about mindless greed. Perhaps it is merely a subliminal demonstration against injustice and the gross injustice of the 5% rule.

Yesterday, Ed Milliband stated that the last government got it wrong, as if we needed it spelling out. He said that they had concentrated on the fabric of the country rather than the ethics. I’m not entirely sure they did the former but certainly the latter was not the driving force for reform that we expected from a ‘socialist’ government. The will to appease the middle ground meant that the desire to eradicate or certainly narrow the gaps of social and economic inequality was lost. And worst still, there seemed to be no vision or collective values around making the difference that so many people need and want.

That is why the 5% and the 90% still remain and will do so for a long time to come unless somebody sticks their neck out for change; and even then we all have to join forces in a collective consciousness to do something about it.