People
25/01/2018

Oxfam Says 82% Of Global Wealth Belongs To Richest 1%, Stresses Widening Inequality Gap




The global charity Oxfam claimed that the amount of wealth that is present with the poorest 50 percent worldwide is owned by just 42 people.
 
There was a call for addressing the increasing gap existing between the super-rich and the rest of the world population given by the Oxfam report published recently. The study report claimed that while no part of the additional global income had gone to the poorest, just 1 per cent of the richest in the world had access to about 82 percent of the money that was created last year.  
 
The rewards of economic development were "increasingly concentrated" at the top, claimed Oxfam based on its figures. The factors that have driven the inequality gap include businesses' influence on policy decisions, cost-cutting, the erosion of worker's rights and tax evasion were cited by the charity organization.
 
In the decade from 2006 and 2015, there has been an average increase of 13 per cent in the wealth of billionaires every year. An increase of $762 billion in wealth was noted for billionaires last year. that amount is arguable enough to bring an end to extreme poverty seven times. The report also claimed that among the world's 2,043 billionaires, nine out of 10 were men.
 
Last year, for those people who held financial assets, the main driver for an increase in their wealth was the booming global stock markets. in the first 10 days of 2017, there had been an increase of wealth of $6 billion was seen for Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. This had resulted in Bezos hitting the headlines as being the richest man of the world.
 
The statistics signal "something is very wrong with the global economy", said Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB.
 
"The concentration of extreme wealth at the top is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a system that is failing the millions of hard-working people on poverty wages who make our clothes and grow our food," he added.
 
The agency had been publishing similar report for the last five years. The cumulative wealth that belonged to 3.6 billion people who composed the poorest half of the world's population, was owned by eight billionaires from around the globe, Oxfam had said at the beginning of 2017. According to the organization, there is continuing evidence of the trend of widening of inequality, even though the 2017 number off billionaires was revised to 61 due to improved data.
 
The annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth datebook and Forbes formed the sources of data for the Oxfam report titled "Reward Work, Not Health".
 
The basis of calculations of the wealth of an individual is calculated by ascertaining the total assets of the individual – primarily property and land, and subtracting the debts that they owed. The data excludes wages and income for this determination or assets. This formula of ascertaining wealth has been criticized by many because it can identify as poor a student with a high debt but higher future potential for earnings.  
 
(Source:www.cnbc.com) 

Christopher J. Mitchell
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