The world can see its first trillionaire within the next 10 years, anti-poverty group Oxfam said in a report published on Monday, reflecting the widening wealth gap between a few of the world's richest people and the rest of the population below them.
Oxfam's report, titled Inequality Inc., paints a grim picture of a dynamic between the global elite and the poor that has only worsened since the pandemic began in 2020. Since then, the the wealth of the five richest men in the world — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett — surged 114%, Oxfam said , citing evidence from The real-time Forbes billionaires list.
Bezos' fortune grew the least in that time frame with just a $32.7 billion increase to about $167.4 billion, according to the report, while Musk's grew the most, to $245.5 billion from $24.6 billion. dollars in 2020. The total wealth of the five billionaires combines to about $869 billion.
Meanwhile, another five billion people – the majority of the world's population – have been made poorer by the Covid pandemic, Oxfam said, with the bottom 60% of the world's population losing a total of about $20 billion.
“A massive concentration of global corporate and monopoly power is exacerbating inequality across the economy,” the report said, calling for tighter government regulations to redistribute wealth. “Seven out of ten of the world's largest companies have as their principal shareholder either a billionaire CEO or a billionaire. By squeezing workers, avoiding taxes, privatizing the state, and fueling climate collapse, corporations drive inequality and act in the service of providing ever greater wealth to their wealthy owners. To end extreme inequality, governments must radically redistribute the power of billionaires and corporations to ordinary people.”
In the foreword to the report, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote that “never before have we seen this unprecedented level of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility on the part of the ruling class.”
“Billionaires are getting richer, the working class is struggling and the poor are living in despair. This is the unfortunate state of the global economy,” Sanders noted in the report's foreword. “Here's the simple truth: If we stand united in our common humanity, there are tremendous opportunities ahead of us to create a better life for all.”
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