Abolish the Super Rich?

Everything you know about capitalism is wrong. Free markets aren’t really free. Record corporate pro­fits don’t trickle down to everyone else. We aren’t empowered to make our own choices – they’re made for us every day. The story is all too familiar. The global economy generates immense fortunes for a super-rich elite, yet at the same time pay stagnates for ordinary workers, food banks proliferate and public services collapse around us. In this Ethical Matters talk, journalist Grace Blakeley and author Luke Hildyard ask if we have had enough of the super-rich.

Luke Hildyard is the Director of the High Pay Centre, a UK think tank focused on pay, employment rights and responsible business. He has commented on issues including pay and inequality for multiple media outlets including The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, Daily Mirror, BBC, Sky News, CNN and CNBC.

Grace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune Magazine and author of several books, including Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom, The Corona Crash: How the pandemic will change capitalism and Stolen: How to save the world from financialisation. She is the former economics commentator for the New Statesman, and a former Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research.