Davos, Switzerland: The “Survival of the Richest” report published by Oxfam International has stated that the richest 1 percent bagged nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world population put together since 2020.
In the annual inequality report released during the World Economic Forum annual meeting, Oxfam further stated that billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.
While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires, a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest.
Ms. Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, shared.
“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises. It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships, just the superyachts,” the executive director added.
The report pointed out that the share of the richest 1 percent was almost twice the amount of money obtained by the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population.
In the past decade, the richest 1 percent had gained around half of all new wealth, which eventually showed that extreme wealth and extreme poverty had increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years.
At the same time, half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants, putting them on track to pass on $5 trillion to their successors, which is more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of Africa.
Oxfam further added that a 5 percent tax on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.