A report by Oxfam has disclosed that the combined fortunes of the world’s five wealthiest men have more than doubled to $869 billion since 2020, while five billion people have been made poorer.
The anti-poverty group’s report reaffirms a long-running dilemma that the rich are getting richer as the poor get poorer.
This is coming as business elites gather this week for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
According to Oxfam’s analysis, nearly 800 million workers saw their wages over the past two years fail to keep up with inflation, resulting on average in the equivalent of 25 days of lost annual income per worker.
Of the world’s 1,600 largest corporations, just 0.4 percent of them have publicly committed to paying workers a living wage and to supporting a living wage in their value chains, the study found.
It estimated that 148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profits, 52 percent up on a three-year average, allowing hefty pay-outs to shareholders even as millions of workers faced a cost of living crisis as inflation led to wage cuts in real terms.
Also, according to the Oxfam report, a billionaire is now either running or is the main shareholder of seven out of 10 of the world’s biggest companies.
It added that the inflation-adjusted surge in wealth of the top five billionaires was driven by strong gains in the assets of Tesla CEO, Elon Musk; LVMH chief Bernard Arnault; Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and investor Warren Buffett.
The report’s release follows a flood of layoff announcements across the tech industry last week after the sector hired heavily during the pandemic.
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