One more component to wealth being transferred to wealthy countries not taken account of is corrupt leaders of Third World countries banking their wealth in western banks. Recent cases include the Gaddafi family and Mubarak, just to name two. Third World industrialists bank their ill-gotten gains in foreign banks as well. These are all part of the top 1 percent, but take away from their own people.

Interesting and surely important though this sort of thing, statistics like 80% of the world’s ‘wealth’ in the hands of 20%, has been going on for a very long time. True, there has been a massive increase of focus on these issues in more recent years, I hope that’s encouraging, I hope it translates into positive outcomes.

Thanks for an excellent summary. Very digestible and terribly challenging.