Susan Smith believes we have become too complacent about the rich becoming richer
Several stories highlighted the gap between the rich and poor in Scotland this week. We’ve discovered four families have as much wealth as the bottom 20% of society and that 35 executives earn on average 77 times the minimum wage. Facebook, the biggest social media company in the world, paid less tax in the UK last year than the average worker.
What do these people do with all this money? Well, if you take the Wood family, one of the big four highlighted in the Oxfam Scotland report, they attempt to distribute it back through a charitable foundation. Oil industry multi-millionaire Ian Wood has plowed a staggering £180 million into the Wood Foundation over the last five years. A commendable move – although according to the foundation’s annual reports, the cash is not flowing outwards anywhere near as fast.
Philanthropy is an increasingly common response from the extremely wealthy – think Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Tom Hunter. But is it working?
Too many of us believe my enemy is not the rich landowner whose poor wages keep me in servitude but the neighbour who crept into my garden in the middle of the night to steal my carrots
Child poverty in the UK is not falling, more and more families are turning to foodbanks, the minimum wage (even after introduction of Westminster’s so-called living wage) falls short of what people actually need to enjoy a basic standard of living. Internationally, extreme poverty continues to exist at a frightening scale. Malawi, with its historical links to Scotland, was rated the poorest country in the world this year. 50% of the population live below the international poverty line of $1 a day.
None of this is news to people working in Scottish charities. They see the implications of income inequality every day. For some reason, though, it doesn’t feel like this reality is getting through to the general public.
This summer, the media focused more on fundraisers manipulating money out of the vulnerable and the salaries of charity chief executives (in Scotland these average around 3% of the top paid executive's salaries) than on poverty. It’s easy to see this and blame the right-wing media but is this enough?
As a society we have been persuaded that the pursuit of individaul wealth is a just cause. Too many of us believe our enemy is not the rich landowner whose poor wages keep us in servitude but the neighbour who creeps into our garden in the middle of the night to steal our carrots. We don't want to know that our neighbour is starving, we condemn him for committing the ultimate sin – being poor.
If Scottish charities are to have any hope of overcoming this pervasive propaganda, they must tell the world that inequality is simply wrong. It is wrong for four families to earn as much as the 20% of the population. It’s wrong that Facebook can avoid paying tax in the UK. It’s wrong that a handful of executives get paid 77 more than their cleaners. It’s wrong that foodbanks exist, that the new living wage is not a living wage at all, that the UK refuses to open its doors to more desperate asylum seekers.
Life might not be fair, but it would be a lot fairer if Scotland’s richest people and companies did the right thing and contributed their fair share.
