The world could have its first trillionaire within a decade, anti-poverty organization Oxfam International said Monday in its annual assessment of global inequalities timed to the gathering of political and business elites at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
Oxfam, which for years has been trying to highlight the growing disparities between the super-rich and the bulk of the global population during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, reckons the gap has been “supercharged” since the coronavirus pandemic.
The group said the fortunes of the five richest men — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family of luxury company LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investment guru Warren Buffett — have spiked by 114% in real terms since 2020, when the world was reeling from the pandemic.
Oxfam’s interim executive director said the report showed that the world is entering a “decade of division.”
“We have the top five billionaires, they have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost 5 billion people have become poorer,” Amitabh Behar said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, where the forum’s annual meeting takes place this week.
“Very soon, Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire within a decade,” Behar said, referring to a person who has a thousand billion dollars. “Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years.”
If someone does reach that trillion-dollar milestone — and it could be someone not even on any list of richest people right now — he or she would have the same value as oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil fame is widely considered to have become the world’s first billionaire in 1916.
Currently, Musk is the richest man on the planet, with a personal fortune of just under $250 billion, according to Oxfam, which used figures from Forbes.
By contrast, the organization said nearly 5 billion people have been made poorer since the pandemic, with many of the world’s developing nations unable to provide the financial support that richer nations could during lockdowns.
In addition, Oxfam said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent energy and food costs soaring, disproportionately hit the poorest nations.
With Brazil hosting this year’s Group of 20 summit of leading industrial and developing nations, Lawson said it was a “good time for Oxfam to raise awareness” about inequalities. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has put issues that concern the developing world at the heart of the G20 agenda.
Oxfam said measures that should be considered in an “inequality-busting” agenda include the permanent taxation of the wealthiest in every country, more effective taxation of big corporations and a renewed drive against tax avoidance.
To calculate the top five richest billionaires, Oxfam used figures from Forbes as of November 2023. Their total wealth then was $869 billion, up from $340 billion in March 2020, a nominal increase of 155%.
For the bottom 60% of the global population, Oxfam used figures from the UBS Global Wealth Report 2023 and from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2019. Both used the same methodology.
(AP)
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4 Responses
I think oxfam is better described as a Marxist or communist organization pretending to be an anti poverty organization
That means someone, probably starting from relatively modest means, has created a trillion dollars worth of new production, providing good jobs and upward mobility for tens of thousands of people. Unlike government programs which make politicians moderately well off, and give minimal handouts to the poor. If the people in non-profits are jealous, they should change careers and get jobs that create economic benefits for society.
So the viciously antisemitic organization Oxfam, to which no decent person should ever donate a penny, is also communist. This report shows that Oxfam couldn’t give a **** about helping the poor; rather, its aim is to hurt the rich and steal from them, because its members are hateful horrible people who are simply consumed with envy at the idea that some people are better off than others, and that the people who create wealth deserve to have it. This is pure evil. Anyone who really cares about the poor should be delighted that there are rich people, who can be approached for donations. The more rich people there are, and the richer they are, the better for the poor, if you really care about them.
It’s not as if any of their wealth came from the poor; the poor have nothing to steal. The rich created their wealth, and if they’re nice people and you appeal to them honestly and sincerely they will be happy to give some of that wealth to those in need. But not if you attack them and urge the voters to become armed robbers and rob them.
It’s amazing that their flawed rationale has any traction at all. Rich individuals do not increase the number of poor. The number of poor and their condition would be exactly the same if there were no billionaires in the world. Taking away every penny from the rich would not appreciably change the life of the poor. Any minor change would be very short lived. This is all a matter of envy. Envy is a reality, of course, but it is something to be ashamed of.