ABUNDANCE – In its report on global inequalities, published Monday, January 17, before the virtual opening of the Davos Forum, the NGO Oxfam reveals that the fortunes of the ten richest billionaires jumped with the Covid-19. It has increased more in 19 months of the pandemic than in the last decade.
The editorial staff of LCI with AFP –
Always richer, even with the Covid-19. The fortunes of the ten richest men in the world have doubled since the start of the pandemic while the incomes of 99% of humanity have melted, according to a report by Oxfam, made public on Monday, January 17. “Growing economic, gender and racial inequalities and inequalities between countries are destroying our world”, denounces the NGO fighting against poverty, in a report entitled “Inequalities kill” and published on the edge of the Davos Forum.
The cumulative fortune of all billionaires has known since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic “its biggest increase ever”, of 5000 billion dollars, to reach its level “The highest” to 13,800 billion. According to the magazine Forbes, the ten richest people in the world include Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bernard Arnaud (LVMH), Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), Larry Page and Sergey Brin ( Google/Alphabet), Waren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers (L’Oréal).
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In France, the billionaires have also enriched themselves in a way “historical” during the health crisis. “From March 2020 to October 2021, the wealth of large French fortunes jumped by 86%, a gain of 236 billion euros”, underlines the NGO. “By way of comparison, they had increased by 231 billion euros in 10 years, between 2009 and 2019.
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Inequality contributes to death, says Oxfam “of at least 21,000 people a day” based on global deaths due to lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger and the climate crisis. She recommends not hampering the creation of unions and lifting intellectual property on vaccine patents.
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 income from the pandemic 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 80 countries”, she gives as an example, in her report.
In addition, Oxfam specifies that this would still leave “8 billion more than before the pandemic” to all of these fortunes. “Billionaires had a tremendous pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, many of which ended up in the pockets of billionaires.”
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