1% is not just a number, it is a system, an economic system shaped by the rich and powerful, where unbridled greed and accumulation are seen as virtues to be rewarded by society, instead of aberrations which must be kept within limits through social and democratic processes.

It is a model in which who produces, what is produced, or whether anything at all is in fact produced, are questions that disappear from the economic equation. They are replaced by tools of money-making, money making money, or what Aristotle called ‘chrematistics’. It effects an economic apartheid between the haves and havenots, which translates into an ecological apartheid between the lives and live- nots, not just in the human family, but in the earth family. The rise of the 1% embodies a will to exclude, an urge to exterminate. Its inevitable consequences are ecocide and genocide.

The Oxfam report, ‘An Economy for the 1%’, reveals that the richest 1% own as much as 3.6 billion people do—the bottom 50% of humanity.1 While the wealth of the richest 62 people in the world increased by more than 45 percent between 2010 and 2015—an increase of more than half a trillion dollars, from $542 billion to $1.76 trillion—the wealth of the bottom half fell by just over a trillion dollars over the same period—a drop of 38 percent. In 2010, 388 individuals had as much wealth as the poorest half; in 2011, the figure was 177; in 2012, it dropped to 159; in 2013, it went down further to 92; in 2014, it was 80; and in 2017, the figure came down to just eight.2

Today, the financial sector, where the rich make money out of money, has increased to 15 percent of the GDP in most countries worldwide, including India and the US. As the Oxfam report indicates, in the economy of the 1%, 437 of the largest corporations in 2014 were financial, and their assets were five times greater than those of corporations in other sectors. Following the 2008 financial crisis, the richest 1% captured 95% of the world’s growth, reports The Wall Street Journal. While ordinary people lost jobs, homes, pensions and security, those gambling in the financial markets got richer.