The cost-of-living crisis: How corporate greed turned an ecological crisis into profits for the few

These are not separate or isolated crises but the result of decisions made by those who hold power – governments and corporations. These crises are the inevitable result of an economic system rigged to generate increasing wealth and power for rich elites, billionaires and corporations – at the expense of the vast majority of people on this earth. This is the background to the current ‘cost-of-living’ crisis: a cost-of-greed crisis. 

For 500 years, the logic of exploitation of people and the limitless extraction of resources has fuelled slavery, colonialism and imperialism. The manifestation of this logic that has prevailed for the last four decades, known as neoliberalism, stressed the superiority of ‘free markets’ that actually embedded structures of exploitation and oppression in a system of ‘racialised capitalism’ across the globe. Even as some countries previously most enthusiastic about neoliberal economics have seemingly turned away from the free market approach, those oppressive and exploitative structures have remained in place.

This system has brought vast wealth and influence over trade, tax and other financial policies for a select few. For everyone else, the current ‘cost-of living’ crisis is yet another shock that has its roots in an unfair global economic system. One based on relentless extraction and exploitation in pursuit of wealth through any means necessary, regardless of the damage to communities and to the planet. As governments determine how best to respond, it is clear that tinkering around the edges of a failed economic system will not be enough to meet and reverse the damage being done to people and planet.

Instead, a radical vision of alternatives is needed, proposed through the framework of a Global Green New Deal; which prioritises a fair global economy. Key to a shift to a just world will be the transfer of wealth back to the Global South, the redistribution of wealth within countries, public ownership and dismantling corporate power, and countries paying their fair share of responsibility for climate breakdown.

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