36 CONTEXT 184 : JUNE 2025 IAN WRAY Old buildings and oligarchs Further inequality, economic growth and the rise of automation, artificial intelligence and virtual reality could increase the long-term economic value of heritage assets. Are you feeling flush? Then you might like to consider a short stay in the exclusive London Raffles hotel, formerly the Old War Office in Whitehall. You can stay in the very room once used by Winston Churchill. This deal will not come cheap: a long weekend in an executive room could set you back by about £3,000. It is often difficult to convince others (not least Treasury economists) of the value of heritage as an economic asset. Heroic and generally unconvincing attempts have been made to quantify the economic benefits of heritage, usually rooted in benefits to tourism, or in approaches that place greater emphasis on ‘wellbeing’ as an economic outcome1. But what Winston Churchill’s former office shows is that some people really do value heritage and will pay a great deal to experience or be associated with it. The rich get richer Inequality of wealth in many countries has been rising sharply. The rich are getting much richer and those on middling incomes, not to mention the poor, have not. Damon Silvers at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose has drawn the key data together2. Inequality in the UK increased sharply under Margaret Thatcher and it has not reduced since. International inequality has grown sharply since the 1970s. In 2015 the richest 62 people on the planet owned as much net wealth as the poorer half of humanity, more than 3.5 billion people. Inequality is not just generated by the small number of billionaires. The richest one per cent of the world’s population hold a little more than half of all global private net wealth. The USA leads the world in wealth inequality: the wealthiest 20 Americans own as much as the bottom half of the population³. In much of the world the rich are getting richer and they have money to spend on whatever they like. What motivates their spending patterns? There are only so many expensive toys or holidays they can consume; beyond that, money has to go into purchasing assets as a store for their wealth. To some extent the desire for status can be secured by buying very expensive Heritage at a price: the former Old War Office building is now the London Raffles hotel. Designed by Clyde Young, it was completed in 1906. (Photo: Garry Knight, Wikimedia) 1 Since 2018 the UK’s HM Treasury has placed greater weight on wellbeing as a core economic outcome in its revised publications of the Green Book, the framework under which government departments make investment decisions, but the chancellor’s recent speeches have emphasised traditional valuations of GDP growth. See also Thomas Colwill and Adala Leeson (2025) ‘The economics of health and wellbeing’, Context 183, March. ² Damon Silvers, Understanding neoliberalism as a system of power, https:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hLtkJ-AgLuY ³ Walter Scheidel (2017) The Great Leveller, Princeton University Press.
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