To me, the biggest threat raised by rising inequality of income and wealth is that, if it’s not addressed in time, that this can lead to the rise of nationalism, xenophobic politics and identity based politics. Why? Because if you don’t find democratic ways to reduce inequality, then you will always find some politicians who will use the frustration created by rising inequality in order to find some groups and to sort of imagine and try pretend that they’re responsible for rising inequality, so you know you can find foreign workers or foreigners, and you know, this is something in my country, in France, which the National Front and the extreme right has tried to do.
You can find in the U. S. , you have seen Trump trying to explain that the problem of the poor white was the poor black or the poor Latino or the poor Muslim or whatever.
In Britain, with the Brexit, you know, the Polish worker was supposed to be the responsible for all the problem. You know, it’s always tempting, you will always find, unfortunately, some politicians who will try to get power by trying to find someone to blame. And you can always find people to blame, or sometimes other countries to blame for inequality.
And I see this risk today stronger than ever. I think this risk of rising inequality being used to increase social tension and sometimes nationalist tension between groups or between countries was already present in the past and I think in particular that very large levels of inequality you find in most Europeans societies between 19th century and World War I did contribute to the rise of social tension and nationalist competition between countries which in the end led to World War I. Today the context is very different, I’m not saying that rising inequality will lead to the same catastrophic events, but there is a risk gradually that if we don’t pay attention, that we move more and more to a situation where identity based politics and xenophobic political discourse take strength and I think that it’s not a coincidence if the two countries where we’ve seen the rise of Trump and Brexit are also the two countries where rising inequality in the West was strongest.
This was something that could happen elsewhere as well, and for me I think this is the biggest risk of rising inequality.
