In a report published on Monday entitled “Inequalities kill”, Oxfam explains that the fortunes of billionaires have increased more during the Covid-19 pandemic than during the last decade.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates … The heritage of the ten richest men in the world has indeed doubled since the start of the health crisis while the income of 99% of humanity has melted, alerts the NGO .
If the phenomenon is global, Oxfam shows in a report specific to France that the wealth of billionaires in France also experienced an “unprecedented” increase during the Covid-19 epidemic.
A heritage that exploded with the pandemic
From March 2020 to October 2021, the fortune of French billionaires increased by 236 billion euros, an increase of 86%, underlines the NGO. “236 billion euros is enough money to quadruple the budget of the public hospital or pay a check for 3500 euros to each French person”, assures Oxfam.
By way of comparison, their wealth had increased “only” by 231 billion between 2009 and 2019.
The top five fortunes in France – Bernard Arnault (LVMH), Françoise Bettencourt (L’Oréal), François Pinault (Kering) and Alain and Gérard Wertheimer (Chanel) – are all affected by this dazzling increase in wealth, as we can see on the graph below.
These five ultra-rich alone have seen their wealth double, increasing by 173 billion euros in just 19 months. “It’s almost as much as the state has spent to deal with the coronavirus in one year, all expenses combined,” says Oxfam.
Just behind the boss of Tesla Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault is the second billionaire in the world whose fortune has experienced the highest growth rate between March 2020 and October 2021. Indeed, the wealth of the boss of LVMH has been multiplied by 2, 5 (+96 billion euros) during the pandemic.
To what do the ultra-rich French owe this historic increase? “Not by the invisible hand of the market, nor by the brilliant strategic choices of billionaires”, denounces Oxfam. “It is mainly because of the public money paid unconditionally by governments and central banks which they were able to take advantage of”, assures the NGO.
As early as June 2020, the bank UBS warned of the disproportionate impact of the monetary policies of central banks on the fortunes of billionaires. With an unconditional “whatever it takes” policy to deal with the crisis, governments and central banks have enabled the largest increase in the wealth of billionaires ever recorded.
Oxfam
The most precarious increasingly poor
The pandemic has therefore benefited the accounts of billionaires in France, as well as those of millionaires. The country now has 125,650 households with assets over $5 million, according to the Wealth-X database. On the other hand, the Covid-19 epidemic had the opposite effect for the most precarious French people.
Certainly, devices such as partial unemployment were widely applied during the health crisis. In addition, INSEE assured last fall that the epidemic had not caused a significant increase in the level of poverty in France. On the other hand, the institute pointed out that the intensity of this poverty had increased.
In other words, the pandemic has accentuated the precariousness of households that were already in the most difficulty. “Forgotten from recovery plans, precarious workers (especially women), migrants and young people have seen their situation deteriorate even further,” notes Ofxam.
Consequence: the first five fortunes of France now own as much as the 40% of the poorest households. Seven million people now need food aid to live, or 10% of the French population, according to Secours Catholique.
And since the start of the epidemic, four million additional people have been in a vulnerable situation because of the crisis.
Young people, especially students, are largely affected. With the successive confinements, they were 13% more to have to resort to food aid according to the French Federation of Food Banks.
The Restos du Coeur regret that young people now represent more than half of their beneficiaries.
On a global scale, Oxfam’s observation is not much more encouraging…
The cumulative fortune of all the billionaires on the planet has experienced since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic “its largest increase on record”, from 5,000 billion dollars, to reach its highest level” at 13 800 billion.
Since the start of the pandemic, “the world has had a new billionaire every 26 hours, while 160 million people have fallen into poverty”, denounces the NGO. Women, people of color and people in developing countries are the most affected, she says.
Thus, “252 men today share more wealth than the billion girls and women living in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined”, also deplores Oxfam.
the NGO also notes that inequalities contribute to the death of “at least 21,000 people a day”.
How to remedy these monstrous inequalities?
If the epidemic and the government’s measures have reinforced inequalities, Oxfam ensures that this gap between the precarious French and the ultra-rich has widened since 2017 and throughout the five-year term.
“Emmanuel Macron’s political choices over the past five years have caused a secession of the richest and overwhelmed the most fragile with the decline in APL, the reform of unemployment insurance, cuts in the budgets of public hospitals, in the education,” says the NGO.
A statement reinforced by data from the Institute of Public Policy (IPP), which confirms that the richest 1% saw their standard of living increase by 2.8% on average during Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term.
During this time, the poorest 5% of households lost up to 0.5% of their purchasing power.
“Not a fatality”
In the eyes of Cécile Duflot, director general of Oxfam, “inequalities are not inevitable”. This is why the NGO presents following its report a series of 15 tax measures that it believes should be put in place to guarantee the reduction of inequalities between billionaires and modest French people.
Reform of inheritance tax, return of wealth tax, particularly for the most polluting assets, fairer income tax… “It is now urgent to involve these billionaires who have benefited from public money”, judge Quentin Parrinello, spokesperson for Oxfam France.
These fifteen measures could bring in at least an additional 65 billion euros per year, assures the NGO, which encourages the candidates for the presidential election to seize it.