Opinion | Fate of Chinese and American billionaires reveals divergences in fight against poverty
- While the presidents of both countries have pledged to deal with growing inequities, the US’ capitalist ethos makes government intervention a hard sell
- In contrast to the flamboyant space voyages of US billionaires, China’s wealthy have been put on notice
It is a gross travesty of justice that the richest 10 per cent is taking home 52 per cent of global income, as revealed in the World Inequity Report 2022.
Sadly, there is no escaping the two superpowers’ jostling for primacy even in the fight against poverty. They are coming into this rivalry from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber argued that the Protestant doctrine of personal salvation led to a more autonomous conception of the individual, which in turn engendered a self-reliant, industrious way of life that fuelled the rise of capitalism in the West.
Then, in The Religion of China, Weber explained that in ancient China’s cosmology, the individual is integrally bound to the kinship clan, fostering a communitarian ethos. This ethos resonated with socialism.
