Top 1 percent control over half of world’s wealth
The richest 1 percent of the population owns more than half the world’s wealth as of 2016, Oxfam International said in a report released as the World Economic Forum begins in Davos, Switzerland.
Oxfam said the world’s richest people saw their share of global wealth jump to 48 percent last year from 44 percent in 2009. Rising inequality is holding back the fight against global poverty as the world’s biggest companies lobby the U.S. and European Union for beneficial tax changes at a time when average taxpayers are still paying the bill for the financial crisis, Oxfam said.
“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined?” Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam’s executive director, said in a statement. “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.”
While world leaders such as President Barack Obama and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde have talked about tackling extreme economic inequality “we are still waiting for many of them to walk the walk,” Byanyima said.
The healthcare and financial services industries spent almost $900 million to lobby the U.S. government for favorable legislation in 2013, and more than $200 million was spent on lobbying in the EU, Oxfam said.
At the same time, one in nine people don’t have enough to eat and more than a billion people live on less than $1.25 a day, Oxfam said, ticking off statistics that paint a grim picture for all but the world’s richest.
The wealthiest are getting wealthier, and lobbying has a lot to do with it
Growing wealth inequality certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, and almost a year after the Thomas Piketty sensation, chatter about its causes and consequences hasn’t dulled. The Oxfam report zeroes in on the political influence affordable to the ultrarich: lobbying, specifically in the financial and pharmaceutical and health care industries.
It used to be that the total wealth of the world’s billionaires and of the bottom half of the globe increased at roughly the same rate. That changed in 2010. Total wealth for the poorest 50 percent has actually decreased from what it was in 2009, while wealth at the top has doubled (in nominal terms). Just 80 billionaires now control the same wealth as 3.5 billion people.
Article By Simone Pathe January 19, 2015
Full article at http://pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/wealthiest-getting-wealthier-lobbying-lot/
