At $5 trillion, this is the biggest increase in billionaire wealth since the record began (Representative)
New Delhi / Davos:
The first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic saw the incomes of 99% of humanity fall and more than 16 family members pushed into poverty even as the 10 richest men in the world witnessed Their wealth doubled to $1.5 trillion (more than Rs 111 crore) at a rate of $1.3 billion (Rs 9,000 crore) a day, a new study showed on Monday.
In the report titled ‘Deaths of Inequality’ published on the first day of the World Economic Forum’s Virtual Summit in Davos, Oxfam International adds that inequality is contributing to responsible for the deaths of at least 21,000 people a day, or one death every four seconds.
This is a conservative finding based on global deaths from lack of access to health care, gender-based violence, hunger and climate degradation, it added.
The ten richest men in the world have seen their wealth grow at a rate of $15,000 per second during the first two years of the pandemic, and if tomorrow these ten men lose 99.999% of their wealth, they would still be 99% richer. of everyone on this planet.
Gabriela Bucher, CEO of Oxfam International, said: “They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.
“Never has it been so important to start fighting the violent wrongs of this obscene inequality by reclaiming the power and extreme wealth of the elites, including those of the elite,” she said. through taxes – put that money back into the real economy and save lives,” she said.
According to Oxfam, billionaire wealth has increased more since the birth of COVID-19 than in the past 14 years. At $5 trillion, this is the biggest increase in billionaire wealth since record-setting.
For example, a 99% tax on the ten richest men during the pandemic might have to be paid to produce enough vaccines for the world; provide universal health care and social protection, finance climate adaptation and reduce gender-based violence in more than 80 countries; while still leaving these men $8 billion better than before the pandemic.
“Billionaires have had a terrible pandemic. Central banks have pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, but much of it has left the pockets of billionaires. Wealth boomed when the stock market boomed.Vaccines were used to end the pandemic, but still rich, Bucher said.
She alleges that the world’s response to the pandemic has fueled this outbreak of economic violence in a particularly profound way across racial, marginalized and gender boundaries.
“As COVID-19 spikes, this leads to an increase in gender-based violence, even as women and girls receive more unpaid care,” says Bucher.
Research shows that the pandemic has established gender parity from 99 years to now 135 years.
In total, women will lose $800 billion in income in 2020, with 1.3 billion fewer working women than in 2019. 252 men have more wealth than all of the one billion women and girls in the country. Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined.
It added that the pandemic had hit racist groups hardest.
During the second wave of the pandemic in the UK, people of Bangladeshi descent were five times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white Britons. Blacks in Brazil are 1.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than whites. In the US, 340,000 black Americans would be alive today if their life expectancy were the same as that of whites, according to Oxfam.
It said inequality between countries is expected to increase for the first time in a generation.
Developing countries, denied access to enough vaccines because wealthy governments protect pharmaceutical monopolies, have been forced to cut social spending and are now facing the prospect of measures waist belt. According to Oxfam, the rate of people infected with COVID-19 dying from the virus is twice as high in developing countries as in rich countries.
Furthermore, Oxfam says inequality is also at the heart of the climate crisis, with the richest 1% emitting more than twice as much CO2 as the bottom 50% of the world’s population, leading to climate change. Climate throughout 2020 and 2021 has contributed to wildfires, floods, tornadoes, crop failures and famine.
It suggests that governments should urgently recoup the profits made by billionaires by taxing the vast wealth newly acquired since the start of the pandemic through perpetual capital and wealth taxes.
Oxfam also calls for investments of the trillions of dong that can be collected from these taxes towards progressive spending on universal health care and social protection, climate change adaptation as well as the program. and prevent gender-based violence.
It went on to recommend addressing sexist and racist laws and ending laws that undermine workers’ rights to unite and strike.
Oxfam said: “Rich governments must immediately abandon intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccine technology to allow more countries to produce safe and effective vaccines to open end of the pandemic”.
Bucher asserts that it is not a lack of money but the lack of courage and imagination to break free from the deadly, failed neoliberalism of extremism, Bucher says, “Governments would be wise to listen to movement – young climate strikers, Black Lives Matter activists, #NiUnaMenos feminists, Indian farmers and others – who are demanding justice and equality.”
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
