Already, the globe’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to £681.5bn since 2020, while the world’s poorest 60 per cent – almost 5bn people – have lost money.
And the yawning gap between rich and poor is likely to increase with world poverty not eradicated for another 229 years if current trends continue.
The details come in a report by Oxfam as the world’s richest people gather this week in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum meeting of political leaders, corporate executives and the super-rich.
The charity’s report Inequality Inc highlights a dramatic increase in inequality since the Covid-19 pandemic with the world’s billionaires £2.6tn richer than in 2020 as their wealth grows three times faster than the rate of inflation.
The fortunes of the five richest men – Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family of luxury company LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investment guru Warren Buffett – have spiked by 114 per cent in real terms since 2020.
Oxfam’s interim executive director said the report showed that the world is entering a “decade of division”.
Amitabh Behar said: “We have the top five billionaires who have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost five billion people have become poorer.”
“Very soon, Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire within a decade,” he said, referring to a person who has a thousand billion dollars.
“Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years.”
If someone does reach that trillion-dollar milestone, he or she would have the same value as oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
John D Rockefeller of Standard Oil fame is widely considered to have become the world’s first billionaire in 1916.
Currently, Mr Musk is the richest man on the planet, with a personal fortune of £196bn, according to Oxfam, which used data from the research company Wealth X and Forbes.
By contrast, the organisation said 4.77bn people have been made poorer since the pandemic, with many of the world’s developing nations unable to provide the financial support that richer nations could during lockdowns.
In addition, Oxfam said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent energy and food costs soaring, has disproportionately hit the poorest nations.
Oxfam is raising awareness over inequalities as Brazil prepares to host this year’s G20 summit of leading industrial and developing nations.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has put issues that concern the developing world at the heart of the G20 agenda.
Oxfam is calling for “inequality-busting” measures including the permanent taxation of the wealthiest in every country, more effective taxation of big corporations and a renewed drive against tax avoidance.
A ‘wealth tax’ on British millionaires and billionaires could bring in £22bn for the exchequer each year, if applied at a rate of between one per cent and two per cent on net wealth above £10m, its report found.
Julia Davies, an investor and founding member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, a nonpartisan group of British millionaires campaigning for a wealth tax, said levies on wealth were “minuscule” compared with taxation on income from work.
“Just imagine what £22bn a year invested in public services and infrastructure could pay for; improving the lives of every one of us who live in the UK and providing our elderly, young and vulnerable with the care and support they need and deserve,” she said.
To calculate the top five richest billionaires, Oxfam used figures from Forbes as of November 2023. Their total wealth then was £681bn, up from £266bn in March 2020, a nominal increase of 155 per cent.
For the bottom 60 per cent of the global population, the figures are from the UBS Global Wealth Report 2023 and from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2019. Both used the same methodology.
