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  • The gap between the very richest and the rest of us is getting bigger.

  • Why?

  • A common belief is that it's good for us all if a small group of people earn an enormous amount of money.

  • The theory is that their wealth trickles down to the rest of us.

  • But this is a myth.

  • In reality, money is sucked up from all of us in to the pockets of a very small group of people.

  • How does this happen?

  • One reason is the way that money is created.

  • Right now, almost all of the money in our economy is created by banks when they make loans.

  • Now most people assume that when banks make loans, they are lending out someone else's savings.

  • But they are not.

  • Instead, when somebody takes out a loan, banks create new money electronically, by typing numbers in to their account.

  • 97 % of all of the money in our economy is created in this way, as people take out loans from banks.

  • The more loans people take, the more debt there is, and the more money there is.

  • The shocking fact is, if nobody went into debt, there would be almost no money in the economy.

  • Our economy depends on the electronic money created by banks.

  • But because the money is created when people borrow, someone, somewhere, has to pay interest on every pound created.

  • In effect, we are renting the money we need to run our economy from the banks.

  • This means that in the UK alone, together we pay the banks £192 million in interest every single day.

  • And because the debt is held mostly by the bottom 90% and wealth mostly by the top 10%, paying this interest transfers money from the bottom 90% of the population to the very top 10%.

  • It sucks wealth and income from the rest of us up to the very lucky few.

  • So as long as we have to rent the money we use from the banks that create it, we'll have to keep paying this huge interest bill.

  • And the gap between the richest and the rest of us will keep increasing.

  • But there are ways to create money that don't depend on us all going into debt to the banks.

  • We want to see money created by a public body and spent into the economy, so that we don't have to borrow all of the money we need from the banks.

  • This would lead to less debt, and stop the gap between the richest and the rest of us getting even bigger.

  • This is what we're campaigning for.

  • Join us by signing up at Positive Money and sharing this video.

The gap between the very richest and the rest of us is getting bigger.

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