Protesters take part in a demonstration against the World Economic Forum (WEF) during the WEF annual meeting in Davos on May 22, 2022
Mon 23 May 2022:
Despite salaries moving slowly and workers grappling with decades-high prices in the face of COVID-19, firms in the energy, food, and pharmaceutical sectors are reaping record profits.
According to a new Oxfam research titled “Profiting from Pain,” the Covid-19 pandemic created a new billionaire every 30 hours, and a million people could fall into extreme poverty at the same rate by 2022. According to the report, billionaires in the food and energy industries are doubling their fortunes every two days as the cost of essential products rises faster than it has in decades.
The World Economic Forum in Davos, the world’s most exclusive gathering of the global elite, will meet for the first time in person since COVID-19, a period during which billionaires’ wealth has risen.
The international charity argued that it was time to tax the wealthiest to aid the least fortunate as the global elite gathered in the Swiss mountain refuge for the World Economic Forum after a two-year Covid-induced hiatus. As rising prices exacerbate the Covid problem, Oxfam forecasts that 263 million people will fall into extreme poverty this year, at a rate of one million every 33 hours. In comparison, 573 people became millionaires during the pandemic, or one every 30 hours.
“Billionaires are arriving in Davos to celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes. The pandemic and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply put, been a bonanza for them.
Meanwhile, decades of progress on extreme poverty are now in reverse and millions of people are facing impossible rises in the cost of simply staying alive,” said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.
“Billionaires’ fortunes have not increased because they are now smarter or working harder. Workers are working harder, for less pay and in worse conditions. The super-rich have rigged the system with impunity for decades and they are now reaping the benefits.
They have seized a shocking amount of the world’s wealth as a result of privatization and monopolies, gutting regulation and workers’ rights while stashing their cash in tax havens — all with the complicity of governments,” said Bucher.
In the first 24 months of COVID-19, billionaires’ wealth climbed more than in the previous 23 years combined. The world’s billionaires currently own 13.9 percent of global GDP. This is a threefold increase since 2000. (4.4 percent).
Despite salaries moving slowly and workers grappling with decades-high prices in the face of COVID-19, Oxfam’s latest report indicates that firms in the energy, food, and pharmaceutical sectors — all of which have monopolies — are reaping record profits.
The wealth of food and energy millionaires have risen by $453 billion in the last two years, or $1 billion every two days. Five of the world’s largest energy firms (BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, Exxon, and Chevron) are making $2,600 every second in profit, while 62 new food millionaires have emerged.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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