Fortunes of  world’s 10 richest doubled during pandemic

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The fortunes of the world’s 10 richest men have doubled since the start of the pandemic, while the incomes of 99% of humanity have shrunk, according to an Oxfam report on Monday.

“The increase in economic, gender and racial inequalities and inequalities between countries destroy our world”, denounces the NGO for the fight against poverty, in a report entitled “Inequalities kill” and published before the Davos Forum.

The accumulated wealth of the group of billionaires has known since the beginning of the pandemic “its strongest increase ever recorded, reaching its highest level”, at 13.8 trillion dollars.

The ten richest people in the world include, according to Forbes magazine, Elon Musk, Tesla boss Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bernard Arnaud (LVMH), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), Waren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) and Larry Ellison (Oracle).

The NGO adds that “we can overcome extreme poverty through progressive taxation” and free public health systems for all.

Oxfam also recommended that the creation of unions not be hindered and that intellectual property be removed from vaccine patents.

According to Oxfam, inequality contributes to the deaths of “at least 21,000 people a day” due to global deaths from lack of access to health care, gender-based violence, hunger, and the climate crisis.

Exceptional tax
“An exceptional 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, finance climate adaptation and reduce gender-based violence in 80 countries. ”, says the organization.

These tycoons would still be left with “8 billion dollars more than before the pandemic.”

“Billionaires have had a huge pandemic. Central banks pumped billions of dollars into the financial markets to save the economy, much of which ended up in the pockets of billionaires.”

The World Economic Forum has warned that wide inequalities in access to covid-19 vaccines could weaken the fight against major international causes, such as climate change.

The face-to-face forum in Davos has been postponed until the summer due to the omicron variant, but an online edition opens on Monday until January 21.