Poverty gap widens as wealth of five richest men doubles

The gap between the very wealthy and the poor is growing ever wider and there is no sign of it being reversed or slowed down, a new report by Oxfam has revealed.

The report has exposed how the world’s top five richest men have continued to accumulate wealth by exploiting other people and driving some into abject poverty.

“If this trend continues, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years,” explains the report on inequality and global corporate power.

Oxfam says the fortunes of the five individuals have shot up by 114 per cent since 2020, adding that for the past three years, there has been a surge in extreme wealth while global poverty remains mired at pre-Corona pandemic levels. According to the global organisation that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice, the billionaires are $3.3 trillion richer than in 2020, and their wealth has grown three times faster than the rate of inflation.

“The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 — at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer,” Oxfam said in the report released on Monday. It says people across the world are working harder and longer hours, often for poverty wages in precarious and unsafe jobs where the wages of nearly 800 million workers have failed to keep up with inflation and they have lost $1.5 trillion over the last two years, equivalent to nearly a month (25 days) of lost wages for each worker.

This finding is synonymous with Kenya during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 where a majority of the companies were quick to subject their workers to a 50 per cent pay cut which was sustained until April 2022 as a precautionary measure to stay afloat.

“Analysis of World Benchmarking Alliance data on more than 1,600 of the largest corporations worldwide shows that 0.4 per cent of them are publicly committed to paying workers a living wage and support a living wage in their value chains. It would take 1,200 years for a woman working in the health and social sector to earn what the average CEO in the biggest 100 Fortune companies earns in a year,” the report says.

The release of the report coincided with the World Economic Forum which is underway in Davos, Switzerland where elites controlling the global economy through monopoly and other means are in attendance.

“Monopolies harm innovation and crush workers and smaller businesses. The world hasn’t forgotten how pharma monopolies deprived millions of people of Covid-19 vaccines, creating a racist vaccine apartheid, while minting a new club of billionaires,” said Oxfam International Interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar.

Oxfam reports that a billionaire runs or is the principal shareholder of seven out of 10 world’s biggest corporations, noting that 148 corporations made $1.8 trillion in profits equivalent to 52 per cent up on a three-year average while dishing out huge payouts to the rich shareholders as the majority of their workers faced cuts in their real-term wages and salaries.

“We’re witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom. This inequality is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else,” Behar said.

He added: “Runaway corporate and monopoly power is an inequality-generating machine. Through squeezing workers, dodging tax, privatizing the state, and spurring climate breakdown, corporations are funnelling endless wealth to their ultra-rich owners.” Behar said these corporates are also funnelling power, undermining democracies and rights. “No corporation or individual should have this much power over our economies and our lives —to be clear, nobody should have a billion dollars.”

Oxfam’s report also showed how big companies have caused corporate tax rate fall in the recent past, as corporations engage in the privatisation of the public sector and segregated services like education and water, a move the firm terms as a “war on taxation”.

“We have the evidence. We know the history. Public power can rein in runaway corporate power and inequality —shaping the market to be fairer and free from billionaire control. Governments must intervene to break up monopolies, empower workers, tax these massive corporate profits and, crucially, invest in a new era of public goods and services,” said Behar.

Additionally, Oxfam exposed the uneven distribution of global wealth where, despite representing just 21 per cent of the world’s population, rich countries in the Global North own 69 per cent of global wealth and are home to 74 per cent of the world’s billionaire wealth.