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"#Britain is asset rich. National wealth – a mix of property, business, financial and state assets – stands at almost seven times the size of the #economy. That is double the level of the 1970s.

This has not come about as a result of investment and productivity growth. Instead, much of this private-wealth mountain is unearned – the product of windfall gains, resulting from state-driven asset #inflation, the mass sell-off of former public and commonly held assets (from land to industries) and the #exploitation of #corporate power. As philosopher and civil servant John Stuart Mill quipped during the #Industrial #Revolution, it’s “getting rich while asleep”.

This has widened the #wealth gap. The top tenth of Britons now holds nearly half of the #UK’s private wealth. The poorest half’s share, meanwhile, has never exceeded one-tenth.

As a former #US supreme court justice Louis Brandeis famously declared – a century ago – it was possible, in the US, to have either democracy or great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few – but not both.

Britain today badly fails Brandeis’s #democracy test. Yet, the Labour party’s leaders have no declared plans – at least, as yet – to close this gap."

https://theconversation.com/poverty-in-britain-is-firmly-linked-to-the-countrys-mountain-of-private-wealth-labour-must-address-this-growing-inequality-212741