The rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.
Nothing new about it, right?
Income disparities all over the world are all set to hit a new milestone as the richest 1 percent people on this planet head towards owning more wealth than the rest of the world by 2016, as per the findings of Oxfam International, an Oxford based charity group.
As per the Oxfam report, the share of global wealth of the richest 1 percent which was 44 percent in 2009 has already increased over the last two years, as they now own 48 percent of the global wealth. At this rate, they will own at least half of it by 2016.
The average wealth of every adult in this elite group is $2.7 million (2.3 million Euros), Oxfam said.
Of the remaining 52 percent wealth owned by the rest of the world, 46 percent – is owned by the rest of the richest 20%.
That in effect means that the remaining 80 percent people on our planet (including you and me) share just 5.5 percent of its total wealth with an average wealth of $3,851 (3,330 Euros) as per the report.
“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1% own more than the rest of us combined?” said Oxfam executive director Winnie Byanyima. “The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast,”
The report could not have come at a better time- it has been published just ahead of the annual meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The annual meeting which runs from Wednesday to Friday will be attended by more than 300 heads of state and government officials.
Byanyima, who will be co-chairing at this meeting, urged leaders al over the world to take on “vested interests that stand in the way of a fairer and more prosperous world.”
To bring about a fairer and more equitable distribution of wealth, the governments all over the world need to take up concerted measures to introduce minimum wages, start taxing capital rather than labour, improve public services and tackle problems of black money and tax evasion, apart from introducing other measures.
“Business as usual for the elite isn’t a cost free option — failure to tackle inequality will set the fight against poverty back decades. The poor are hurt twice by rising inequality — they get a smaller share of the economic pie and because extreme inequality hurts growth, there is less pie to be shared around,” added Byanyima.
The report titled Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More, which has used some data picked up from the Forbes’ billionaires list and previous researches by Swiss financial services group Credit Suisse, details how the 80 richest people in the world have a combined wealth of $1.9 trillion. And goes on to mention that it has risen by $600 billion or 50percent during the last four years.
The Forbes list of billionaires for the year 2014 has 1,645 names, with America having the maximum number of them -492 (nearly 30 percent share). Nearly 85% of these people are over the age of 50 and 90% of them are male.
Pope Francis has also raised concern about rising inequality levels while on his recent visit to the Philippines. And a handful of leaders will cry themselves hoarse over the coming week at the plush ski resort in Alps as they ‘discuss’ how to tackle this problem! And then conveniently forget all about it after getting back home.
Check out the video released by Oxfam that gives you an overview of such an unequal world we live in!
The gap, meanwhile, continues to grow wider and deeper.
[…] 1 percent people on this planet head towards owning more wealth than the rest of the world by 2016, as per the findings of Oxfam International, an Oxford based charity […]