In the past few decades,
capitalism in many ways
has conquered the world.
It's difficult to
find a country that
isn't capitalistic
on some level,
but it's produced two,
what economists call,
negative externalities,
bad side effects:
the global ecological crisis
and greatly widening inequality.
Our Future Capitalism
program is largely
focused on trying to address
the second set of issues
through what we call our
pre-distribution agenda.
We're looking for
progressive ways
to fix some of that balance.
The real underlying driver
of growing inequality
is not so much, or
not exclusively,
about income inequality as it
is about wealth inequality.
Following the Great
Depression, levels of wealth
were becoming more
equal until 1980,
when there was a reversal.
Today, the top 0.1 percent
has nearly as much wealth
as the bottom 90 percent.
This affects everyone
because as research has shown
and as we have seen,
rising inequality
is directly correlated
to a rise in populism.
Here at the Berggruen
Institute, we've
been exploring two ideas
to address that inequality.
On a personal
level, there should
be individual
savings programs that
allow everyone to get rich.
These programs have
already been successful
in places like Australia with
their superannuation fund.
Private wealth building needs
to be matched on a public level
as well.
One way to do this would be
to create a national endowment
to be used for the
benefit of all.
We've seen this in places
like Norway and Alaska,
where sovereign wealth
funds provide a way to build
the wealth for everyone.
Pre-distribute the wealth
so that as new wealth
is being created, as capitalism
generates all this new wealth,
it's being shared very broadly
with the population at large,
rather than with a
small number of people
who currently
control the wealth.
