World's 10 richest men doubled their wealth during the pandemic

Jan 17 2022, 9:31 pm

The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, even during a pandemic.

According to Oxfam Canada’s “Inequality Kills” report, the world’s 10 richest men doubled their fortunes from $875 billion to $1.9 trillion during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the incomes of 99% of Canadians have fallen, and over 160 million people are being forced into poverty.

The organization says that this inequality contributes to the deaths of 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds. These findings are based on global deaths from a lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate change.

Oxfam Inequality

Oxfam

“Inequality at such pace and scale is happening by choice, not chance,” said Diana Sarosi, Oxfam Canada’s director of policy and campaigns, in a statement. “Not only have our economic structures made all of us less safe against this pandemic, they are actively enabling those who are already extremely rich and powerful to exploit this crisis for their own profit.”

These rich and powerful now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people, reports Oxfam.

In Canada, specifically, 15 new people have become billionaires. The wealth of the country’s 59 billionaires has increased by $111 billion since March 2020. According to the report, this is “roughly the same amount the federal government spent on COVID-19 income support for workers, including CERB and CRB ($109 billion).”

The report also suggests that a pandemic tax on the 10 richest men at a rate of 99% could pay to make enough vaccines for the world, provide universal healthcare and social protection, fund climate adaptation, and reduce gender-based violence in over 80 countries.

All of this while barely making a dent in their pockets.

“While those at the top are accruing excessive levels of wealth, governments around the world are struggling to provide much needed vaccines and social protection for billions of people who have nothing to fall back on,” said Sarosi. “It has never been more important to start righting the violent wrongs of this obscene inequality.”

Oxfam is urging governments to do the following in order to combat inequality:

  • Tax billionaires
  • Invest the money that could be raised by taxing billionaires toward spending on universal healthcare and social protection, climate change adaptation, and gender-based violence prevention and programming
  • Tackle sexist and racist laws that discriminate against women and racialized people and create new gender-equal laws to end violence and discrimination. Women, racialized and other oppressed groups should be represented in all decision-making spaces
  • Adopt and enforce laws to protect the rights of workers to unionize and strike
  • Waive intellectual property rules over COVID-19 vaccine technologies to allow more countries to produce safe and effective vaccines

The organization based the stats on the 10 richest men on Forbes Billionaires List, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in the top spot, followed closely by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in second place.

This isn’t the first report to highlight income inequality during the pandemic.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives revealed that Canada’s top CEOs earned an average worker’s annual salary before noon on January 4.

Isabelle DoctoIsabelle Docto

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