Oxfam International on Monday has in its report said the COVID-19 pandemic has seen one new billionaire emerging every 30 hours, while nearly one million people could be pushed into extreme poverty every 33 hours this year.
In its report titled ‘Profiting from Pain’, that the rights group has released in Davos, it further said that as the cost of essential goods rises faster than it has in decades, billionaires in the food and energy sectors are increasing their fortunes by $1 billion every two days.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), which describes itself as an international organisation for public-private partnership, is hosting its annual meeting in Davos after a gap of more than two years.
“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.
According to the report, 573 people became new billionaires during the pandemic, at the rate of one every 30 hours.
“We expect this year that 263 million more people will crash into extreme poverty, at a rate of a million people every 33 hours,” Oxfam International said.
The wealth of Billionaires has risen more in the first 24 months of COVID-19 than in 23 years combined. The total wealth of the world’s billionaires is now equivalent to 13.9% of global GDP, marking a three-fold increase from 4.4% in 2000, it added.
Bucher further clarified that the fortunes of billionaires 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,” she added.
Bucher further said, “Meanwhile, millions of others are skipping meals, turning off the heating, falling behind on bills and wondering what they can possibly do next to survive. Across East Africa, one person is likely dying every minute from hunger. This grotesque inequality is breaking the bonds that hold us together as humanity. It is divisive, corrosive and dangerous. This is inequality that literally kills.”
The new research from Oxfam also showed that corporations in the energy, food and pharmaceutical sectors — where monopolies are most common — are posting record-high profits, even as workers struggle with decades-high prices amid COVID-19.
According to the report, five of the largest energy companies — BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, Exxon and Chevron — are together making $2,600 profit every second, and there are now 62 new food billionaires.
It further said that 2,668 billionaires — 573 more than in 2020 — own $12.7 trillion, an increase of $3.78 trillion, while the world’s ten richest men own more wealth than the bottom 40% of humanity or 3.1 billion people.
It said the richest 20 billionaires are worth more than the entire GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa.
“A worker in the bottom 50% would have to work for 112 years to earn what a person in the top 1% gets in a single year. High informality and overload due to care tasks have kept 4 million women in Latin America and the Caribbean out of the workforce. Half of working women of color in the U.S. earn less than $15 an hour,” other findings of the research showed.
Oxfam further said the pandemic has created 40 new pharma billionaires and alleged that pharmaceutical corporations like Moderna and Pfizer are making $1,000 profit every second just from their monopoly control of the COVID-19 vaccine, despite its development having been supported by billions of dollars in public investments.
Oxfam said its calculations are based on the most up-to-date and comprehensive data sources available. Figures on the very richest in society come from the Forbes billionaire list.
