A pedestrian sporting a face masks delivers meals to a homeless individual sleeping within the entrance of a store, closed resulting from coronavirus restrictions, in central London on December 23, 2020.
Tolga Akmen | AFP | Getty Pictures
The pandemic has made the wealthy richer whereas the revenue of the remainder of the world — about 99% of humanity — dropped, in keeping with a brand new Oxfam report titled “Inequality Kills.”
The wealth of the world’s 10 richest males doubled from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion throughout the pandemic, the worldwide charity said on Monday.
“It has by no means been so essential to start out righting the violent wrongs of this obscene inequality by clawing again elites’ energy and excessive wealth together with via taxation — getting that cash again into the true financial system and to save lots of lives,” mentioned Oxfam Worldwide’s Government Director Gabriela Bucher.
A 99% windfall tax on the pandemic positive factors of the world’s 10 richest males would elevate sufficient cash to pay for vaccines for the world — in addition to finance varied social measures for greater than 80 nations, the report mentioned.
The wealth of billionaires rose extra since Covid began in comparison with the final 14 years, and a brand new billionaire was minted each 26 hours because the pandemic started, Oxfam mentioned.
The CEOs of Covid vaccine-developers Moderna and BioNTech made billions in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
On the identical time, the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants are worse off after dropping revenue throughout Covid-19, and 160 million extra individuals fell into poverty, the discharge mentioned.
Windfall tax
One technique to “claw again” the large positive factors made by billionaires throughout the disaster is to tax the cash that billionaires have made because the begin of the pandemic, the report mentioned.
“A 99% one-off windfall tax on the Covid-19 wealth positive factors of the ten richest males alone would generate $812bn,” the report mentioned.
“These sources might pay to make sufficient vaccines for the complete world and fill financing gaps in local weather measures, common well being and social safety, and efforts to handle gender-based violence in over 80 nations,” it additionally mentioned.
If these ten males have been to lose 99.999 p.c of their wealth tomorrow, they might nonetheless be richer than 99 p.c of all of the individuals on this planet.
Gabriela Bucher
government director, Oxfam Worldwide
Even after the tax, the world’s 10 richest males would nonetheless be billionaires and as a bunch, would have elevated their wealth by $8 billion from the beginning of the pandemic, the report mentioned.
“If these ten males have been to lose 99.999 p.c of their wealth tomorrow, they might nonetheless be richer than 99 p.c of all of the individuals on this planet,” mentioned Bucher.
Past a one-off windfall tax, governments should additionally implement or improve everlasting wealth and capital taxes to “basically and radically scale back wealth inequality,” the report mentioned.
The Oxfam report was launched forward of this week’s digital World Financial Discussion board conferences, the place world leaders are set to debate international challenges.
