Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I have one more question before I move on to the next point, whether what we have been talking about has a particular relevance to what happened in Ireland. Oxfam stated that the 80 richest people owned about 48% of world wealth in 2007, when the crash happened. Oxfam states that since 1990 income from labour has made up a declining share of gross domestic product across low, middle and high income countries. It states, "Around the world, ordinary workers are taking home an ever-dwindling slice of the pie, while those at the top take more and more." With that increasing share to profit, interest and rent and less for working people, does Professor Lane see that as a background to working people being forced to borrow more to buy the products that they could not afford from their ordinary wages and then on the other hand these funds that we have been talking about lending to them to try to boost their profits?