The world’s rich became richer by 42 thousand billion dollars
reportedMehr News Agency, according to the new analysis of the Oxfam group on the eve of the third meeting of finance ministers and central bank managers of the Group of 20, the richest 1 percent have accumulated 42 trillion dollars of new wealth in the last decade, which is almost 34 times more than the total 50% of the world’s population is disabled.
The average wealth of each person in the world’s richest 1% was almost $400,000 over the past decade, compared to just $335, an increase of less than 9 cents a day, for someone in the bottom half of the pyramid. Wealth has increased.
The Group of 20 is expected to lay the foundations for a ground-breaking global deal to raise taxes on the super-rich. The proposal, backed by Brazil’s G20 presidency and supported by countries including South Africa, Spain and France, comes amid growing public demand for measures to curb extreme levels of inequality and ensure the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International, said inequality had reached unacceptable levels and governments had so far failed to protect people and the planet from its catastrophic effects. The richest one percent of people continue to line their pockets, while the rest of us are left to pick up the scraps.
According to him, the acceleration of the tax increase on the rich is undeniable and this is the first real test for the G20 governments to show if they have the political will to create a global standard that meets the needs of many people. Does the greed of a few elites prevail?
So far, the “war on fair taxation” has seen drastic reductions in wealth and income tax rates for the wealthiest. Oxfam has calculated that less than eight cents of every dollar of tax revenue in the G20 countries comes from wealth taxes.
Oxfam research also showed that the income share of the top 1 percent of the world’s super-rich countries has increased by 45 percent over four decades, while their top income tax rates have decreased by almost a third.
Globally, billionaires pay a tax rate of less than 0.5 percent of their wealth. According to the EU Tax Watch, global billionaires have very low effective tax rates, between 0 and 0.5 percent of their total wealth.
Also, according to Oxfam, their wealth has increased by an average of 7.1 percent annually over the past four decades, and a net annual tax of at least 8 percent would be needed to drastically reduce the wealth of billionaires. The countries of the Group of 20 are home to almost four out of five billionaires in the world.
Polls consistently show that a majority of people across the country support raising taxes on the wealthiest. For example, the majority of Americans, 80% of Indians, 85% of Brazilians, and 69% of people polled in 34 African countries support increasing taxes on the rich.
Almost three-quarters of the millionaires surveyed in the G20 countries also support higher taxes on wealth, and more than half of them think extreme wealth is a threat to democracy. 72% believe that great wealth helps to buy political influence.
