Oxfam has declared millions of pandemics a “bonanza” because millions are facing poverty

johnpaulMay 23, 2022

Olga Shumytskaya | Moment | Getty Images

Every 30 hours a new millionaire was created in the Covid-19 pandemic, and nearly a million could fall. extreme poverty in 2022 was at the same rate. These are the statistics recently released by Oxfam.

There were 573 billion more people in the world by March 2022 than in March 2022, when the pandemic began, the world charity said in a summary statement released on Monday, the first day of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland. That means a new millionaire every 30 hours, Oxfam said.

In addition, he estimated that in 2022 263 million people could be pushed to the extreme poverty level as a result of the escalating pandemic, growing inequality in the world and rising food prices. That’s the equivalent of nearly one million people every 33 hours, Oxfam said.

The organization reported that the millionaires were collectively valued at $ 12.7 trillion as of March. In 2021, billionaire wealth was equivalent to almost 14% of gross domestic product.

Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said the billionaires were coming to the summit of Davos “to celebrate the tremendous rise of their fortunes”.

“The pandemic and now the huge rise in food and energy prices have simply been a benefit to them,” he said.

“Meanwhile, the decades-long progress around extreme poverty is reversed and millions of people are experiencing unpredictable increases in the cost of survival,” Bucher added.

Pandemic winds

Improving the rise in wealth in specific business sectors, Oxfam said the revenue of food and energy billionaires has risen by $ 453 billion over the past two years, to $ 1 trillion every two days.

For example, the food giant Cargill is one of four companies that control more than 70% of the world’s agricultural market, Oxfam reports. The Cargill family-owned corporation generated nearly $ 5 billion in net revenue last year, the highest profit in its history. Today, there are only 12 billion in the Cargill family, more than eight said before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Oxfam said the pandemic had created 40 billion new ones in the pharmaceutical sector. Millionaires are the ones who have benefited from their companies ’monopolies over vaccinations, treatments, testing, and personal protective equipment.

To prevent greater inequality in wealth and to help people with rising food and energy costs, Oxfam has advised governments to introduce one-off solidarity taxes on pandemic billionaire incomes.

Ending the “Profit of the Crisis”?

The charity has also suggested that governments put an end to the “profit of the crisis” by imposing a 90% tax on temporary profits on profits generated by large corporations in all sectors.

Oxfam also proposed a sustainable tax to limit the extreme wealth, monopoly power and higher carbon emissions produced by the super-rich.

He said the annual wealth tax could generate $ 2.52 trillion a year for millions of millionaires and 5% for millionaires. That would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, vaccinate them enough for the world’s population, as well as provide universal health care and social protection to those living in low- and middle-income countries.