Regular "Guardian" contributor Jason Hickel analyses the timeline of first world exploitation of third, proposing that the problem is inherently political, obfuscated by current thinking on aid and development, and calls for political solutions.

Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, Fulbright Scholar and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is originally from Eswatini (Swaziland) and spent a number of years with migrant workers in South Africa, writing about exploitation and political resistance in the wake of apartheid. He has authored three books, including most recently The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. He writes regularly for the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Foreign Policy, serves as an advisor for the Green New Deal for Europe and sits on the Lancet Commission for Reparations and Redistributive Justice. He lives in London.