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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business

The enemy within? Guardian readers and the 1%

Ferrari car parked outside the Royal Arcade along Bond Street on 26 March 2022 in London, United Kingdom. Bond Street is one of the principal streets in the West End shopping district and is very upmarket. It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century. The rich and wealthy shop here mostly for high end fashion and jewellery.
‘As Pogo said in Walt Kelly’s strip cartoon for Earth Day in 1971: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”’ Photograph: Mike Kemp/In Pictures/Getty Images

Nesrine Malik tells us the system is rigged in favour of the 1% by wealth (Opinion, 23 January). Entry into the global 1%, by the definition used by Oxfam, requires $1m in assets. As the Office for National Statistics tells us, that’s around the 75th percentile of British households by wealth. In other words, 25% of British households are in the top 1% of the global wealth distribution. I’d be willing to bet a substantial sum that 25% of the Guardian’s readership is too. As Pogo said in Walt Kelly’s strip cartoon for Earth Day in 1971: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Tim Worstall
Senior fellow, Adam Smith Institute

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