24th September 2025
Doughnut economics refutes the mainstream theory that if the wealth of an economy increases, that that wealth will not just reward the rich but will trickle down and benefit the poorest too.
One flaw in this trickle down argument is that if you are poor is that you often pay more pro-rata than someone who is wealthy. A rich person who owns a house has both somewhere to live rent free and the means for raising extra money to invest in money making or money saving schemes and products (eg a rich person can afford the cost of a heat pump that will longterm save money). A poor person will not be able to afford to buy a house and instead will be forced to rent so each month income will be going out of their pockets and into the pockets of someone rich enough to own a buy to let property.
This flow of income away from the poor and to the rich (a trickle up effect) has been documented both nationally and globally. This is something Oxfam reports on annually.
“In 2024, the number of billionaires rose to 2,769, up from 2,565 in 2023. Their combined wealth surged from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months. This is the second-largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began. The wealth of the world’s ten richest men grew on average by almost $100 million a day and even if they lost 99 per cent of their wealth overnight, they would remain billionaires.
“UK billionaires saw their collective wealth increase last year by £35 million a day to £182 billion …. Four new billionaires were created last year, taking the current total to 57.
“Meanwhile, according to the World Bank, the number of people still living in poverty – around 3.5 billion – has barely changed since 1990.“ (1)
The poverty line in the UK is determined as households whose income is under 60% of the median household income after housing costs for that year. (2) The Joseph Rowntree Report for 2025 reported that 2 in every 10 adults are in poverty in the UK, with about 3 in every 10 children being in poverty. Further the poorest families – those living in very deep poverty – had an average income that was 57% below the poverty line, with this gap increasing by almost two-thirds over the past 25 years. (3)
- https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-surges-three-times-faster-in-2024-world-now-on-track-for-at-least-five-trillionaires-within-a-decade/
- https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/poverty-thresholds/
- https://www.fva.org/news.asp?id=21118
For further information read more from Oxfam’s report – https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621668/bp-takers-not-makers-200125-summ-en.pdf;jsessionid=1D0798BB3DCCC8B2A556159969CB2CD3?sequence=1
The Green Tau 