ABSTRACT
In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled and their wealth has increased by $2.5 billion a day. In the same period, the wealth of the poorest half of humanity, 3.8 billion people, has fallen by 11 per cent. Put another way, this means that just 26 billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity. This chapter defines neoliberalism, the main cause of this rampant inequality, and charts its origins and first application in Chile in the 1970s. It considers the role that the international development sector can play in supporting paradigm change; a move away from the reckless, destabilising, unregulated capitalism that has taken the poverty gap to unprecedented levels. It argues that the sector can use its collective voice in the domestic arena to call for social and economic justice in the global North and South and support a more interventionist economic paradigm based on fully funded public services, more equitable bands of taxation, health, education and social protections, and climate justice based on internationally agreed targets.
