Inequality and a global pandemic: the perfect storm?

An article in the Financial Times, “This is how class wars start”, contrasts how rich Americans solve the first world problems caused by the pandemic, with summer camps costing several thousand dollars to give parents time away from their children, or very expensive private classes at home, while growing numbers of the 40% of the population who live in rented accommodation are facing eviction.

The combination of growing inequality and the pandemic now threatens to tear our societies apart: Amazon and Facebook founders Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are among the wealthiest of the approximately 640 multi-billionaires in the United States who collectively saw an increase of more than $713 billion in their fortunes in the four months following the lockdown that began in mid-March.

During that same four-month period, some 154,000 Americans died from coronavirus, and 50 million lost their jobs. One in 10 Americans surveyed in early July said they didn’t have enough to eat, and four in 10 people living in rented accommodation said they had trouble making their payments.

As the Financial Times says, citing a phrase commonly attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “when people have nothing else to eat, they will eat the rich.” Capitalist societies, which already had a tendency to concentrate wealth in fewer and…