Rising global inequality-billionaires wealth and extreme poverty are rising at same pace says OXFAM
COVID-19 pandemic created one billionaire in every 30 hours and now one million people could fall into extreme poverty in every 33 hours
Profiting from pain
For every
new billionaire created during the pandemic — one every 30 hours — nearly a
million people could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2022 at nearly the same
rate, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. “Profiting from pain” is published as
the World Economic Forum — the exclusive get-together of the global elite in
Davos — takes place for the first time face-to-face since COVID-19, a period
during which billionaires have enjoyed a huge boost to their fortunes.
“Billionaires
are arriving in Davos to celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes. The
pandemic and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply
put, been a bonanza for them. Meanwhile, decades of progress on extreme poverty
are now in reverse and millions of people are facing impossible rises in the
cost of simply staying alive,” said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of
Oxfam International.
The brief shows that 573 people became new billionaires during the pandemic, at the rate of one every 30 hours. We expect this year that 263 million more people will crash into extreme poverty, at a rate of a million people every 33 hours.
Billionaires’ wealth has risen more in the first 24 months of COVID-19 than in 23 years combined. The total wealth of the world’s billionaires is now equivalent to 13.9 percent of global GDP. This is a three-fold increase (up from 4.4 percent) in 2000.Neoliberal capitalism fueling inequality
“Billionaires’ fortunes have not increased because they are now smarter or working harder. Workers are working harder, for less pay and in worse conditions. The super-rich have rigged the system with impunity for decades and they are now reaping the benefits. They have seized a shocking amount of the world’s wealth as a result of privatization and monopolies, gutting regulation and workers’ rights while stashing their cash in tax havens — all with the complicity of governments,” said Bucher.
Private monopolies and record high profits
Oxfam’s new
research also reveals that corporations in the energy, food and pharmaceutical
sectors — where monopolies are especially common — are posting record-high
profits, even as wages have barely budged and workers struggle with
decades-high prices amid COVID-19. The fortunes of food and energy billionaires
have risen by $453 billion in the last two years, equivalent to $1 billion
every two days. Five of the largest energy companies (BP, Shell, Total Energies,
Exxon and Chevron) are together making $2,600 profit every second, and there
are now 62 new food billionaires.
Together
with just three other companies, the Cargill family controls 70 percent of the
global agricultural market. Last year Cargill made the biggest profit in its
history ($5 billion in net income) and the company is expected to beat its
record profit again in 2022. The Cargill family alone now has 12 billionaires,
up from eight before the pandemic.
From Sri
Lanka to Sudan, record-high global food prices are sparking social and political
upheaval. 60 percent of low-income countries are on the brink of debt distress.
While inflation is rising everywhere, price hikes are particularly devastating
for low-wage workers whose health and livelihoods were already most vulnerable
to COVID-19, particularly women, racialized and marginalized people. People in
poorer countries spend more than twice as much of their income on food than
those in rich countries.
Today, 2,668
billionaires — 573 more than in 2020 — own $12.7 trillion, an increase of $3.78
trillion.
The world’s
ten richest men own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of humanity, 3.1
billion people.
The richest
20 billionaires are worth more than the entire GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa.
A worker in the
bottom 50 percent would have to work for 112 years to earn what a person in the
top 1 percent gets in a single year.
High
informality and overload due to care tasks have kept 4 million women in Latin
America and the Caribbean out of the workforce. Half of working women of color
in the US earn less than $15 an hour.
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The pandemic has created 40 new pharma billionaires. Pharmaceutical
corporations like Moderna and Pfizer are making $1,000 profit every second just
from their monopoly control of the COVID-19 vaccine, despite its development
having been supported by billions of dollars in public investments. They are
charging governments up to 24 times more than the potential cost of generic
production. 87 percent of people in low-income countries have still not been
fully vaccinated.
“The
extremely rich and powerful are profiting from pain and suffering. This is
unconscionable. Some have grown rich by denying billions of people access to
vaccines, others by exploiting rising food and energy prices. They are paying
out massive bonuses and dividends while paying as little tax as possible. This
rising wealth and rising poverty are two sides of the same coin, proof that our
economic system is functioning exactly how the rich and powerful designed it to
do,” said Bucher.
“Over two
years since the pandemic began, after more than 20 million estimated deaths
from COVID-19 and widespread economic destruction, government leaders in Davos
face a choice: act as proxies for the billionaire class who plunder their
economies, or take bold steps to act in the interests of their great
majorities. One common economic sense measure above all will put this to the
test: whether governments will finally tax billionaire wealth”.
Oxfam recommends that governments
urgently:
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