We were told the super rich would make us richer too, so why hasn’t that happened, and what does the arrival of their astronomical wealth really mean for the rest of us?
In programme one of this two-part series, Jacques Peretti looks at how the superrich first exploited an obscure legal loophole to make Britain the most attractive tax haven on earth.
This was no accident. Wooing the superrich was a deliberate strategy by government to reconfigure the British economy, under the belief their wealth would ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us. But it didn’t. The OECD now say the British economy would have been 20% bigger had we not pursued the superrich. So who sold us the fallacy of trickledown and why?
Jacques meets the super-rich themselves – from those buying premiership football clubs to the billionaires who are breaking ranks to criticize the decisions that made them richer, and society more unequal.
Jacques challenges the architects of these policies, as well as tracking down the foreign multimillionaires who are buying up Britain and turning us from a nation of property owners to a nation of renters.
He uncovers new research that shows growing inequality has been driven by this key factor of unaffordable property, and the far reaching effect this will have on every aspect of our lives.
Inequality is reshaping Britain into two simple classes: the 99% and the 1%. This is the story of how it happened and what it means for all of us.