The Guardian

To reverse inequality, we need to expose the myth of the ‘free market’

We need an informed public that sees through the poisonous myth billionaires want us to believe: that income is a measure of your market worthThe need for fact-based journalism is as great as ever. Support the Guardian with a year-end gift.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person. The wealth of the world’s billionaires has risen by more then $10t since the start of the pandemic. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

How have a relative handful of billionaires – whose vast fortunes have soared even during the pandemic – convinced the vast majority of the public that their wealth shouldn’t be taxed in order to support the common good?

They have employed one of the oldest methods used by the wealthy to maintain wealth and power – a belief system that portrays wealth and power in the hands of a few as natural and inevitable.

Centuries ago it was

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