The rich are even richer two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the NGO Oxfam, the wealth of the ten wealthiest men in the world has doubled since the beginning of 2020. “Growing economic, gender and racial inequalities and inequalities between countries are destroying our world”, denounces the NGO fighting against poverty, in a report entitled “Inequality kills”, published on Monday January 17, a few days before the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The cumulative fortune of all billionaires has known since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic “its largest increase ever recorded”, from 5 trillion dollars, to reach its highest level to date, 13.8 trillion. The world now has a new billionaire every twenty-six hours, while 160 million people have fallen into poverty during the same period, calculates the NGO.
The ten richest people in the world include, according to Forbes magazine, the American entrepreneur Elon Musk, the boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla, Jeff Bezos, the founder of the e-commerce site Amazon, the French Bernard Arnault, owner of the luxury group LVMH, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of the social network Facebook, the American businessman Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, the founder of the world number one in the management of databases, Oracle.
A 99% tax on the income of the rich
The NGO adds that “we can overcome extreme poverty through progressive taxation” and public health systems that are free for all. “A windfall tax of 99% on the pandemic income of the ten richest men would produce enough vaccines for the world, provide universal social and medical protection, fund climate adaptation and reduce climate-related violence. gender in eighty countries”, gives the example of the NGO. She specifies that this would nevertheless leave “8 billion more than before the pandemic to these men”.
Inequality contributes to death, says Oxfam “of at least 21,000 people per day”, based on deaths due to lack of access to health care, hunger and the climate crisis. “Billionaires had a tremendous pandemic. Central banks injected trillions of dollars into the financial markets to save the economy, many of which ended up in the pockets of billionaires. »
The World Economic Forum warned for its part that the large inequalities in access to vaccines against Covid-19 risk weakening the fight for major international causes, such as climate change. Postponed to summer 2022 because of the Omicron variant, this meeting between business leaders and political leaders from around the world has been replaced by an online edition which opens on Monday and will continue until January 21.