If world resources were a pie or a roti

Metaphors are a double-edged sword: sometimes they can help clarify concepts, and at other times, their use causes confusion, or may enable intentional obfuscation.

One common metaphor which is commonly used is that which relates the concept of wealth sharing to slices of a pie (which for our purposes can even be compared to a roti).

We can think of the current dilemma of inequality with reference to this metaphoric ‘pie’. Currently, the global wealth pie is divided up in uneven slices, with some getting a lion’s share of the overall pie, while others getting hardly a sliver of it.

One way of solving the problem of deprivation is obviously to use redistributive policies so that the slices of the wealth pie become more evenly proportioned. Many economists, politicians and big business leaders, however, do not want to do this. Instead, they insist on increasing the size of the pie, with their emphasis on the idea of economic growth.

Trying to increase the side of the wealth pie is a clever solution, especially for the already wealthy, as it deflects attention away from thinking about slicing the pie differently. Focusing instead on trying to make the pie bigger, is predicated on the rationale that no matter what proportion of the pie an individual gets in the form of a slice, their share will automatically increase, if the overall size of the pie grows larger.

Moreover, to increase the size of the pie, those in positions of power want to apply top-down policies, whereby those with already large sizes are given the charge of increasing the size of the pie.

We have seen this strategy at work for decades, first with the endorsement of trickle-down policies, and more recently with the use of market-based mechanisms which continue placing full faith in the already haves, and in big corporate empires, to make the pie bigger for everyone one.

There are, however, two problems here. One is that when the pie grows bigger, the ones who have been put in charge of making it bigger, begin appropriating even larger slices of the pie, compared to those with smaller slices.

Consider, for instance, the increase in wealth accumulated in the hands of the wealthiest people in the world on the one hand, and the growing global inequality, and wage stagnation of those with smaller incomes (or proportions of the pie) on the other.

Oxfam’s latest report on global inequality which has estimated that 26 people now own the same amount of money as 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.

The other problem is that the pie cannot keep growing larger. Our world has finite natural resources which place a limit to the amount of growth that can be achieved.

We have already seen the devastation unleashed by unsustainable production processes, which ironically place the biggest toll of environmental degradation and disasters — such as varied forms of pollution, floods and droughts — on poor people, who have done little to add to humanity’s carbon footprint.

If increasing the size of the pie infinitely by exploiting already extremely stressed natural resources is not possible then addressing depravation is not possible without cutting the slices of the pie differently.

There are numerous ways in which global wealth, or the slices of the global wealth pie, can be redistributed more equally. A global wealth tax or universal wage increases could help slice the wealth pie differently.

One wonders how much more suffering and upheaval it will take for those with obscenely sized slices of wealth to volunteer sharing, or being made to share, some of their disproportionate shares with those in desperate need.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2019.

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