Why write about wealth redistribution?

In 2021, as most of us struggled to maintain an income while trapped at home, Oxfam wrote a report on wealth inequality. They stated that the twenty-six richest billionaires owned the same wealth as the poorest half of the world. We were not all in the same boat. Following the pandemic, the ten richest billionaires’ wealth has doubled while the poorest half of the world has become poorer. According to the Rowntree Foundation (2025), 21 percent of the UK population lives in poverty; 8.1 million are working-age adults, 4.3 million are children, and 1.9 million are pensioners. In 2024, the UN estimated that 6.3 billion people worldwide live in acute multidimensional poverty and half of those are children.

I hope for change but I worry that global efforts to reduce inequality are hopelessly ineffective at fighting capitalist greed. Then it hit me, while watching Oceans Eleven (the one with George Clooney et al), that a super speedy way of redistributing wealth could be a global heist, not to make another few people richer, but the whole world better. “Cue the Mission Impossible soundtrack.”

Of course, this is the stuff of fiction. But what is fiction for, if not to ask, what if…?

UK Poverty 2025: The essential guide to understanding poverty in the UK | Joseph Rowntree Foundation

2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) | Human Development Reports