World’s rich are getting richer and the poor more poor, according to Oxfam. Last year, 26 people owned the same wealth as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, down from 43 people the year before, Oxfam said on Monday.
Oxfam said Monday, urging governments to hike taxes on the wealthy to fight soaring inequality.
Last year the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased while the world’s poorest got even poorer. Please share to demand governments #FightInequality and #BeatPoverty. pic.twitter.com/50rC9tKRBK
— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) January 21, 2019
Published ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, also found that billionaires around the world saw their combined fortunes grow by $2.5 billion each day in 2018.
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The world’s richest man, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, saw his fortune increase to $112 billion last year, Oxfam said, pointing out that just one percent of his wealth was the equivalent to the entire health budget of Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people.
The 3.8 billion people at the bottom of the scale meanwhile saw their wealth decline by 11 percent last year, Oxfam said, stressing that the growing gap between rich and poor was undermining the fight against poverty, damaging economies and fuelling public anger.
“People across the globe are angry and frustrated,” warned Oxfam executive director Winnie Byanyima in a statement.
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Other findings of the report are
- Between 1980 and 2016 the poorest 50% of humanity only pocketed 12 cents in every dollar of global income growth. By contrast, the top 1% captured 27 cents of every dollar.
- Between 2017 and 2018, a new billionaire was created every two days 24
- If all the unpaid care work done by women across the globe was carried out by a single company, it would have an annual turnover of $10 trillion 27 – 43 times that of Apple
- While the richest continue to enjoy booming fortunes, they are also enjoying some of the lowest levels of tax in decades – as are the corporations that they own
- Governments should focus their efforts on raising more from the very wealthy to help fight inequality. For example, getting the richest 1% to pay just 0.5% extra tax on their wealth could raise more money than it would cost to educate all of the 262 million children out of school and provide healthcare that would save the lives of 3.3 million people