Oxfam has released the upsetting details of the global rich-poor divide in a report, as the world’s richest people gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum meeting of political leaders, corporate executives and the super-rich.

The cavernous gap between rich and poor is likely to increase globally, the Oxfam report says, and that since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people worldwide. At current rates, it will take 230 years to end poverty, but we could have our first trillionaire in 10 years.

Oxfam’s Report

Citing huge concentration of global corporate and monopoly power contributing to exacerbating inequality economy-wide, the report further says that seven out of ten of the world’s biggest corporates have either a billionaire CEO or a billionaire as their principal shareholder.

Through squeezing workers, dodging tax, privatising the state and spurring climate breakdown, global corporations are driving inequality and acting in the service of delivering ever-greater wealth to their rich owners. To end extreme inequality, governments must radically redistribute the power of billionaires and corporations back to ordinary people, the report urges.

For years, Oxfam has raised alarm about widening and extreme inequality. As we enter 2024, the very real danger is that these extraordinary extremes are becoming the new normal. Corporate and monopoly power is an unrelenting inequality-generating machine.
For most people around the world, the start of this decade has been incredibly hard. For the poorest people, who are more likely to be women, racialised peoples, and marginalised groups in every society, daily life has become more brutal still. Global........

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