Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade: Oxfam Report

- Disgusting': Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade. "The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs." Common Dreams, July 25, 2024.
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The richest sliver of the global population hauled in more than $40 trillion in new wealth over the past decade as countries around the world cut taxes for those at the very top, supercharging inequality that poses a dire threat to democracy and the planet.

An Oxfam analysis released Thursday ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers estimated that over the past 10 years, the global 1% has accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth. That's "nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50% of the world's population," the group observed. "That is disgusting," Michael Taylor, founder of the Australian Independent Media Network, wrote in response to the new figures.

The analysis comes amid a growing push by current and former world leaders for rich countries to enact a global tax on billionaire wealth that would begin to reverse the damage done by decades of regressive policy. Oxfam found in a separate analysis released earlier this year that economic and political elites' global "war on fair taxation" has slashed taxes for the rich by 32% since 1980.

Oxfam said Thursday that global billionaires "have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5% of their wealth."

"Inequality has reached obscene levels, and until now governments have failed to protect people and planet from its catastrophic effects," Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, said in a statement Thursday. "The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs." "Momentum to increase taxes on the super-rich is undeniable, and this week is the first real litmus test for G20 governments," Lawson added. "Do they have the political will to strike a global standard that puts the needs of the many before the greed of an elite few?"

A recent report by renowned economist Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley outlined how nations could go about implementing a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires... - Read More,
https://www.commondreams.org/news/top-1-percent-wealth