The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began. The incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19.
Widening economic, gender, and racial inequalities—as well as the inequality that exists between countries—are tearing our world apart.
Accordind to Oxfam's "Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19" report, this is not by chance, but choice: “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people.
This causes direct harm to us all, and to the poorest people, women and girls, and racialized groups most. Inequality contributes to the death of at least one person every four seconds. But we can radically redesign our economies to be centered on equality.
Clawing back extreme wealth through progressive taxation; invest in powerful, proven inequality-busting public measures; and boldly shift power in the economy and society. If we are courageous, and listen to the movements demanding change, we can create an economy in which nobody lives in poverty, nor with unimaginable billionaire wealth—in which inequality no longer kills.
According to the report , the wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled, while the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off, because of COVID-19.
The 10 richest men in the world own more than the bottom 3.1 billion people. If the 10 richest men spent a million dollars each a day, it would take them 414 years to spend their combined wealth.
If the richest 10 billionaires sat on top of their combined wealth piled up in US dollar bills, they would reach almost halfway to the moon.
A 99% windfall tax on the COVID-19 wealth gains of the 10 richest men could pay to make enough vaccines for the entire world and fill financing gaps in climate measures, universal health and social protection, and efforts to address genderbased violence in over 80 countries, while still leaving these men $8bn better off than they were before the pandemic.
New figures and analysis released in December 2021 by the World Inequality Lab reveal that since 1995, the top 1% have captured 19 times more of global wealth growth than the whole of the bottom 50% of humanity.
Inequality is now as great as it was at the pinnacle of Western imperialism in the early 20th century. The Gilded Age of the late 19th Century has been surpassed.
