World's richest 1% gets 2/3 of $42 trillion in new wealth: Oxfam
British international humanitarian organization Oxfam, in its new report, said the world's richest 1 percent had received about two-thirds of the $42 trillion new global wealth created since 2020 and called for new taxes.
- Life
- Published Date: 09:25 | 16 January 2023
- Modified Date: 09:30 | 16 January 2023
According to Oxfam's "Survival of the Richest" report released Monday, the share of the richest is nearly double that of the bottom 99 percent of the world's population.
According to the report, the wealth of billionaires increased by $2.7 billion per day.
Oxfam said the best-off had added $26 trillion of new wealth to their personal fortunes by the end of 2021.
Oxfam said a 5 percent tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires around the world could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.
"While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams," said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.
"Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires —a roaring '20s boom for the world's richest," she stressed.
"Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today's overlapping crises. It's time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow 'trickling down' to everyone else," she added.
"Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn't lift all ships —just the superyachts."