thank you very much if ever there’s an
idea worth spreading it’s the end of
poverty it’s the making history of this
terrible blight on humanity it’s the
thing that divides us it’s the thing
that creates inequality it’s the thing
that we need to focus on we’ve made
incredible achievements over the last 25
years we can be optimistic poverty in
the world’s fallen by about 300 million
people even though the world’s
population has increased by about 2
billion over this lifetime we I mean we
collectively our social and political
forces have never been more effective at
fighting poverty then over this period
of time but over billion people still
love lives under $2 a day well over 2
billion people live under $3 a day and
when you walk here from Kings Cross down
the road you walk by people who are
living in dire poverty it’s around us
it’s everywhere it’s in our lifetimes
and the key question is can we make
poverty history the MDGs the milind
Millennium Development Goals set a
target of harming world poverty by 2010
and they succeeded and now our target
has to be eliminating poverty and that
implies also hugely reversing the
growing inequality poverty comes in many
forms and when we think about it we all
have different images in our minds we
all think about different people it has
so many dimensions dimensions which are
defined by gender by race by age by
place and of course all of those matter
it’s the poverty that surround us that
we need to address first but of course
it’s global poverty a child dying
anywhere in the world
is on all of our conscience someone’s
suffering because they don’t have to is
our responsibility and that’s not simply
an ethical position
it’s a position which I believe must be
taken if we wanted to see us to
sustainable future if we want a cohesive
world and poverty might even be getting
worse in fact we might have reached peak
poverty reduction what does this mean it
means that we might be getting less
effective and poverty might be getting
much worse and why do I say this because
there are a number of forces building
out there that we need to struggle
against that we need to push back if we
to eliminate poverty austerity the
financial crisis of ten years ago has
greatly increased poverty it’s led to
over fifty million people around the
world being laid off it’s reduced
pensioners Inc comes and it’s reduced
the incomes of governments it’s led to
the rising of fees it’s cutting of
Social Security the reduction of health
budgets education budgets infrastructure
and as working the Oxford Martin School
incidently funded by city has just shown
it has a dramatic increase on poverty
and inequality austerity has greatly
raised this another great challenge is
that of course poverty intersects with
all other dimensions of our lives it
intersects with where we live how we
live whether we have water whether we
have food whether we have the things we
need and the growing risks coming from
climate change from biodiversity loss
from water depletion and degradation
raised poverty and increase inequality
if you’re rich you can avoid these
things you can go to Las Vegas or
Phoenix and live happily
those are rapidly growing cities because
you can turn on the aircon pipe water
from further and deeper but of course if
you live in fragile places if you don’t
have the money to pay for these things
your life can be wrecked and many people
many millions of people of course die as
a result of these things
exacerbate poverty risks exacerbate
inequality and climate risk and
biodiversity loss environmental risks
amongst these risks are particularly
destructive of lives and futures for
people in communities so when we say
let’s eliminate poverty we are not
saying that is the only thing we need to
focus on we need to focus on creating a
sustainable planet where everyone can
live together if course wars conflicts
or development in Reverse people’s
livelihoods as you’ll hear from Syria
and elsewhere get destroyed by this and
so peace is absolutely fundamental to
the elimination of poverty it’s no
accident that the most intractable
poverty in the world is in fragile
states where there are virtually no
governments where governments are in
conflicts the raising of walls around
our societies is another huge impediment
to poverty reduction and reductions in
inequality of parents in our
grandparents and our great-grandparents
escaped famines pogroms Wars by being
refugees and by being migrants none of
us would be here tonight if that have
not happened a third of Ireland migrated
a third of Sweden migrated a third of
Italy migrated that’s how those people
and their grandparents maintained their
families and survived but those walls
that are going up now in keeping people
out mean that people are trapped in
poverty they cannot escape and that
trapping is going to increase poverty in
many many ways within our societies
there’s also been capture there’s been
capture of government by their very
wealthy and this has to be reversed if
we to overcome poverty and reduce
inequality the top 1% of
people in the u.s. now have 40% of the
wealth they had 30% before the financial
crisis in the UK the equivalent number
is that had about 19% before the
financial crisis and today they have 25%
this is not simply because they’ve been
able to hold on to their assets and
diversify as we learn from The Guardian
Paradise financial structures or Panama
but also because poor people don’t have
the savings to withstand these crises
and because the rich are able to buy the
lobbying power to put them in power and
of course to reduce taxes and taxes are
absolutely central to the redistribution
of income and expenditures which are
vital for poverty reduction for
investing in social security safety nets
for investing in health in education in
unemployment benefit and all these other
things and so the capture of
government’s by elites
is a deeply troubling thing and has to
be stopped if we to eliminate poverty
and inequality we need to ensure that we
know that our voice is heard in
government and that the voice of the
wealthy and wealthiest is not more
powerful than ours that is the
fundamental basis of a democracy but
when you need billions of dollars to
become the President of the United
States tens of millions of dollars to be
a congress person you can hardly say
that ordinary people can become a
president and so our political
structures need to change and when you
see the populism and the anger you
wonder why their people are saying we
don’t trust the experts we don’t trust
Authority we don’t trust globalization
my view is that because the system has
let people down terribly badly there is
rising inequality the world is far from
being more flat is being more
mountainous it is more and more
difficult
to be at the frontier of change ratios
of rentals or house prices in London not
least in this area where we are here to
income are at record highs and the same
is true of every dynamic city in the
world if you in these right places at
the right times with the right skills
you do very well but if you not it’s
more and more difficult to get yeah and
that’s why the divides within our
society the divides between London and
the South East of England and the rest
of England or between the coastal and
dynamic cities of the US and the Midwest
or Mumbai and the rest of India or
Shanghai and the countryside in China or
greater and greater inequality is
economic geography inequalities about
where people are about place and about
whether people can be there unemployment
in London is an almost record low
incomes are relatively high but if you
can’t get here you can’t be part of that
and so addressing things like housing
markets transport systems getting to
places becomes essential to this if
you’re in the Midwest of the US today
your life expectancy in many towns of
the Midwest is lower than your parents
the prospects of getting a job or lower
than your parents and your chances of
moving home are half of what your
parents were and your unemployment rates
are double and then you wonder why
people vote for Trump and extremists the
system is not working for ordinary
people in many parts of the world and
this is a fault not only of the
right-wing governments but of the
left-wing governments too people have
been let down there are new forces
coming which will compound this problem
that we need to think very deeply about
one of them is automation groups in the
Oxford Martin School estimate that about
40% of UK jobs forty-seven percent in
the u.s. about 60% in China are
vulnerable to machine intelligence and
robotics over the next 20 years
anything that’s very routine and rules
based whether it’s manufacturing
something or a call center or
back office and administrative tasks can
be done by computers in the future and
robotics so what is our development
model how are people going to be
employed and these are the reasons I’m
setting out why I say we need to
redouble our efforts to ensure that we
don’t look back on this time and say
this was the successful time in poverty
reduction because we have an ambition we
have an ambition that we know more than
ever before we have more learning we
more have more capacity to understand
what’s happening none of us can say we
don’t know that’s happening
our veil of ignorance has been lifted by
the power of social media of information
that we have so let’s not wherever we
are in the world say we don’t know and
we also can’t say we don’t know what to
do because there are thousands and
thousands of case studies of people that
have escaped poverty of systems that are
working the way that the estate that the
financial crisis has impacted on
different countries is extremely
different in some countries it didn’t
lead to any increase in inequality or
poverty and in others poverty and
inequality was increased dramatically
there are great experiments going on all
over the world which show what can be
done and there are inspirational people
all over the world that show that we as
individuals can make a difference that
we can spark off each other that we can
learn more rapidly because we have this
connectivity so the excuses are fading
away it’s become a time of choice it’s
become a time when we need to say what’s
important to us what do we believe in
how much difference are we as
individuals going to make to this
problem and the ideas that you hear are
I hope inspirational to you and we’ll
help you make that difference thank you
very much
[Applause]
you
idea worth spreading it’s the end of
poverty it’s the making history of this
terrible blight on humanity it’s the
thing that divides us it’s the thing
that creates inequality it’s the thing
that we need to focus on we’ve made
incredible achievements over the last 25
years we can be optimistic poverty in
the world’s fallen by about 300 million
people even though the world’s
population has increased by about 2
billion over this lifetime we I mean we
collectively our social and political
forces have never been more effective at
fighting poverty then over this period
of time but over billion people still
love lives under $2 a day well over 2
billion people live under $3 a day and
when you walk here from Kings Cross down
the road you walk by people who are
living in dire poverty it’s around us
it’s everywhere it’s in our lifetimes
and the key question is can we make
poverty history the MDGs the milind
Millennium Development Goals set a
target of harming world poverty by 2010
and they succeeded and now our target
has to be eliminating poverty and that
implies also hugely reversing the
growing inequality poverty comes in many
forms and when we think about it we all
have different images in our minds we
all think about different people it has
so many dimensions dimensions which are
defined by gender by race by age by
place and of course all of those matter
it’s the poverty that surround us that
we need to address first but of course
it’s global poverty a child dying
anywhere in the world
is on all of our conscience someone’s
suffering because they don’t have to is
our responsibility and that’s not simply
an ethical position
it’s a position which I believe must be
taken if we wanted to see us to
sustainable future if we want a cohesive
world and poverty might even be getting
worse in fact we might have reached peak
poverty reduction what does this mean it
means that we might be getting less
effective and poverty might be getting
much worse and why do I say this because
there are a number of forces building
out there that we need to struggle
against that we need to push back if we
to eliminate poverty austerity the
financial crisis of ten years ago has
greatly increased poverty it’s led to
over fifty million people around the
world being laid off it’s reduced
pensioners Inc comes and it’s reduced
the incomes of governments it’s led to
the rising of fees it’s cutting of
Social Security the reduction of health
budgets education budgets infrastructure
and as working the Oxford Martin School
incidently funded by city has just shown
it has a dramatic increase on poverty
and inequality austerity has greatly
raised this another great challenge is
that of course poverty intersects with
all other dimensions of our lives it
intersects with where we live how we
live whether we have water whether we
have food whether we have the things we
need and the growing risks coming from
climate change from biodiversity loss
from water depletion and degradation
raised poverty and increase inequality
if you’re rich you can avoid these
things you can go to Las Vegas or
Phoenix and live happily
those are rapidly growing cities because
you can turn on the aircon pipe water
from further and deeper but of course if
you live in fragile places if you don’t
have the money to pay for these things
your life can be wrecked and many people
many millions of people of course die as
a result of these things
exacerbate poverty risks exacerbate
inequality and climate risk and
biodiversity loss environmental risks
amongst these risks are particularly
destructive of lives and futures for
people in communities so when we say
let’s eliminate poverty we are not
saying that is the only thing we need to
focus on we need to focus on creating a
sustainable planet where everyone can
live together if course wars conflicts
or development in Reverse people’s
livelihoods as you’ll hear from Syria
and elsewhere get destroyed by this and
so peace is absolutely fundamental to
the elimination of poverty it’s no
accident that the most intractable
poverty in the world is in fragile
states where there are virtually no
governments where governments are in
conflicts the raising of walls around
our societies is another huge impediment
to poverty reduction and reductions in
inequality of parents in our
grandparents and our great-grandparents
escaped famines pogroms Wars by being
refugees and by being migrants none of
us would be here tonight if that have
not happened a third of Ireland migrated
a third of Sweden migrated a third of
Italy migrated that’s how those people
and their grandparents maintained their
families and survived but those walls
that are going up now in keeping people
out mean that people are trapped in
poverty they cannot escape and that
trapping is going to increase poverty in
many many ways within our societies
there’s also been capture there’s been
capture of government by their very
wealthy and this has to be reversed if
we to overcome poverty and reduce
inequality the top 1% of
people in the u.s. now have 40% of the
wealth they had 30% before the financial
crisis in the UK the equivalent number
is that had about 19% before the
financial crisis and today they have 25%
this is not simply because they’ve been
able to hold on to their assets and
diversify as we learn from The Guardian
Paradise financial structures or Panama
but also because poor people don’t have
the savings to withstand these crises
and because the rich are able to buy the
lobbying power to put them in power and
of course to reduce taxes and taxes are
absolutely central to the redistribution
of income and expenditures which are
vital for poverty reduction for
investing in social security safety nets
for investing in health in education in
unemployment benefit and all these other
things and so the capture of
government’s by elites
is a deeply troubling thing and has to
be stopped if we to eliminate poverty
and inequality we need to ensure that we
know that our voice is heard in
government and that the voice of the
wealthy and wealthiest is not more
powerful than ours that is the
fundamental basis of a democracy but
when you need billions of dollars to
become the President of the United
States tens of millions of dollars to be
a congress person you can hardly say
that ordinary people can become a
president and so our political
structures need to change and when you
see the populism and the anger you
wonder why their people are saying we
don’t trust the experts we don’t trust
Authority we don’t trust globalization
my view is that because the system has
let people down terribly badly there is
rising inequality the world is far from
being more flat is being more
mountainous it is more and more
difficult
to be at the frontier of change ratios
of rentals or house prices in London not
least in this area where we are here to
income are at record highs and the same
is true of every dynamic city in the
world if you in these right places at
the right times with the right skills
you do very well but if you not it’s
more and more difficult to get yeah and
that’s why the divides within our
society the divides between London and
the South East of England and the rest
of England or between the coastal and
dynamic cities of the US and the Midwest
or Mumbai and the rest of India or
Shanghai and the countryside in China or
greater and greater inequality is
economic geography inequalities about
where people are about place and about
whether people can be there unemployment
in London is an almost record low
incomes are relatively high but if you
can’t get here you can’t be part of that
and so addressing things like housing
markets transport systems getting to
places becomes essential to this if
you’re in the Midwest of the US today
your life expectancy in many towns of
the Midwest is lower than your parents
the prospects of getting a job or lower
than your parents and your chances of
moving home are half of what your
parents were and your unemployment rates
are double and then you wonder why
people vote for Trump and extremists the
system is not working for ordinary
people in many parts of the world and
this is a fault not only of the
right-wing governments but of the
left-wing governments too people have
been let down there are new forces
coming which will compound this problem
that we need to think very deeply about
one of them is automation groups in the
Oxford Martin School estimate that about
40% of UK jobs forty-seven percent in
the u.s. about 60% in China are
vulnerable to machine intelligence and
robotics over the next 20 years
anything that’s very routine and rules
based whether it’s manufacturing
something or a call center or
back office and administrative tasks can
be done by computers in the future and
robotics so what is our development
model how are people going to be
employed and these are the reasons I’m
setting out why I say we need to
redouble our efforts to ensure that we
don’t look back on this time and say
this was the successful time in poverty
reduction because we have an ambition we
have an ambition that we know more than
ever before we have more learning we
more have more capacity to understand
what’s happening none of us can say we
don’t know that’s happening
our veil of ignorance has been lifted by
the power of social media of information
that we have so let’s not wherever we
are in the world say we don’t know and
we also can’t say we don’t know what to
do because there are thousands and
thousands of case studies of people that
have escaped poverty of systems that are
working the way that the estate that the
financial crisis has impacted on
different countries is extremely
different in some countries it didn’t
lead to any increase in inequality or
poverty and in others poverty and
inequality was increased dramatically
there are great experiments going on all
over the world which show what can be
done and there are inspirational people
all over the world that show that we as
individuals can make a difference that
we can spark off each other that we can
learn more rapidly because we have this
connectivity so the excuses are fading
away it’s become a time of choice it’s
become a time when we need to say what’s
important to us what do we believe in
how much difference are we as
individuals going to make to this
problem and the ideas that you hear are
I hope inspirational to you and we’ll
help you make that difference thank you
very much
[Applause]
you
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