Taking advantage of the fact that 17 October is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Argilan ESK, a platform for the fight against poverty and exclusion, has considered it an interesting date for making a new contribution in the field of poverty, as opposed to what the Basque Government has been presenting since last month, taking advantage of the publication of the numerical tables of the 2022 Poverty and Social Inequality Survey.

We start from the thesis that neither economic growth nor work (employment) is a guarantee of eradicating poverty, as are the mechanisms for combating inequalities. It is increasingly evident in the history of this neoliberal, unbearable and ecological era of capitalism, in which we have been trapped in the last three decades, that the concentration of wealth has become not only a fundamental mechanism of the functioning of the capitalist system, but also a cause of incapacity to eradicate poverty.

According to Credit Suiss’s 2022 Global Wealth report, 1.1% of the world’s population has more than a million dollars (915,800 euros) and controls 45.8% of global wealth; the number of global millionaires has grown rapidly in recent years, surpassing for the first time in 2020 1% of the adult population. The added wealth of the global super-rich has multiplied by five, from $41.4 trillion in 2000 to 208.3 trillion in 2022, and their global share of wealth has increased from 35% to 46% in that period. By contrast, 50 per cent of the world ' s population has less than 1 per cent of the global wealth.

Last month, Tables 31 of the 2022 Poverty and Social Inequalities Survey were published. The assessment of the Basque Government and other institutions has been unanimous, with data on poverty in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV) in all its dimensions improved, both as regards the types of poverty and its collective and territorial distribution compared to the 2020 survey. The Basque Government’s report on the fight against poverty concludes that we are on the right track in terms of anti-poverty policies.

In Argilan ESK we do not share the official narrative, although we admit that most of the data provided by the 2022 survey show a decrease in poverty compared to the 2020 survey. Our report on poverty in the Basque Country, after reading the tables of the 2022 Poverty and Social Inequalities Survey, contradicts what the Basque Government did:

1. As usual, the official interpretations of poverty that we are accustomed to bring to the fore the most serious forms of poverty. And it's not something we find illogical. However, above all the economic, social and ecological crises that we have been facing since the Great Recession 2008-2012, are affecting the citizens that until now we have said to be middle-class, and we are questioning whether they are middle-class increasingly, because they tend to descend into the social pyramid. That’s why we give a data from the 2022 survey table that has not been given from institutions, which says that people at risk of lack of well-being, who in 2020 were 424,649, 19.6% of the total CAPV population, have risen to 482,720 in 2022, or 22.3% of the population.

2. The survey table always attracts our main concern and measures the impact of the benefits of the Basque System of Income Guarantee and Social Inclusion (RGI), Supplementary Housing Benefit (PCV) and Social Emergency Aid (AES). This policy of the Basque Government, which has been the basis of the fight against poverty in the Basque Country since 1989, has never been aimed at eradicating poverty, but at settling down to live with poverty and obtaining political benefits in terms of peace and social control. For this reason, the decline of the population served through this benefit system in 2022 to 120,594 people (5.6% of the population at risk of poverty) compared to 127,953 people in 2020 (5.9% of the population at risk of poverty), and has not hit the finger in a 34-year model that leaves tremendous deficits, which:

a. It leaves 39,143 people without access to benefits (1.8% of the population at risk of poverty), despite being very poor, because they do not meet the requirements and obligations established by law. b. It still holds 48,244 people in poverty (2.2% of the population at risk of poverty), as benefit coverage prevents them from becoming poor. c. It shows that, adding people from the two previous cases, 87,387 people (of the 159,737 people who make up the group of people at risk of poverty in 2022, that is, 54.7% of the total people at risk of poverty – let us stress that it is more than half – have remained poor, although the Basque Government launched a policy of poor people over three decades ago. We really don't think it's a result of pride.

3. The Poverty and Social Inequalities Survey, although theoretically it should measure social inequalities in depth, does not because it does not present results on the number of people at the top of the CAPV population pyramid and on income and wealth (wealth). It is certain that the processes of concentration of wealth that we have seen on a global level are also taking place in our territory, but we are used to the fact that the Basque Government, with the fear of intervening in the taxation that always protects economic power (both with the people who exercise it and with their societies of capital), never takes the step of considering the current model of combating poverty depreciated, and of putting into operation another model that causes poverty to disappear in society.

At Argilan ESK we are striving for the establishment of an unconditional Basic Income that guarantees to all citizens of the CAPV adequate individual and unconditional monthly income to cover the barrier of poverty, that is, essential expenses for a dignified life. The implementation of this economic policy requires comprehensive tax reform. As a result of this reform, 20 per cent of the richest population should pay more taxes, and of the remaining 80 per cent 60 per cent would be net beneficiaries of the reform, while the other 20 per cent would remain the same.

Iñaki Uribarri Hernández, member of Argilan - ESK