Are the rich getting richer because the poor are getting poorer? |
Adherents of the zero-sum belief that the rich are only rich because they have taken something from the poor cannot explain why the number of poor people fell massively while the number of rich people rose massively, says Rainer Zitelmann
“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer” – few statements have been repeated as often, and therefore many people believe it. Many even believe that there is a connection between the two developments, meaning that the poor become poorer because the rich become richer. This is called the zero-sum belief.
Before capitalism emerged, around 200 years ago, roughly 80 to 90 per cent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Thanks to the development of capitalism, this share had roughly halved by 1990. For 1990, the World Bank estimates that around 2.3bn people lived in extreme poverty, corresponding to about 43 per cent of the world’s population at the time.
A particularly sharp decline can be observed from the 1990s onward. The collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc states, as well as the beginning of capitalist reforms in countries such as China and Vietnam, led to a decrease in both........