By Peter Weber The Week
The wealth of the world’s 10 richest people, as measured by Forbes, more than doubled between March 2020 and November 2021, advocacy group Oxfam reported Monday, rising to $1.5 trillion from about $700 billion. Meanwhile, the incomes of 99 percent of people in the world fell during the pandemic, Oxfam said, citing World Bank data. The group suggested a one-time global tax on billionaires.
“Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic,” Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher said Monday in a statement accompanying the charity’s annual report. “Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom.”
If the world’s 10 richest men — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, and Warren Buffett — lost 99 percent of their wealth, Bucher said, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all people on this planet. Musk’s wealth grew by more than 1,000 percent during the pandemic, while Gates saw a more modest 30 percent rise in his fortune.
