Just 62 people control more wealth than half the world's population: study - CSMonitor.com - 1 views
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Oxfam argues that there are several reasons for why the disparity between rich and poor has become so vast, including what the report terms “the global spider’s web of tax havens and the industry of tax avoidance, which has blossomed over recent decades.”Oxfam estimates that nearly $7.6 trillion, or more than twice the combined GDP of the United Kingdom and Germany, is currently being held offshore.
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The Oxfam study also suggests that the global economy’s push on the importance of capital over labor is another reason for widening inequality. This not only concentrates national incomes in the hands of those few that control it, Oxfam says, but has implications for private companies as well. It increases pay for executives while preventing many workers in the very lowest-paying jobs at the bottom from earning higher wages.
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"A recent study conducted by Oxfam International indicates that just 62 people, 53 of them men, now control over half the world's wealth. The study, 'An Economy for the 1 Percent,' was released ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The study from the anti-poverty NGO calculated that 62 people held the same amount of wealth as the world's 3.6 billion poorest citizens in 2015. That's a huge drop from the estimated 388 people who controlled that amount of wealth in 2010, and the concentrated amount of wealth that those 62 people possess has increased by 44 percent over that same five-year period, to $1.76 trillion dollars. It is true that global poverty has declined substantially since 1990, according to Oxfam. However, the study found that at the same time that global wealth rose dramatically among the world's richest 1 percent, the relative wealth of those living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically since 2010, by approximately $1 trillion." -
The divide between the haves and the have-nots has been deepening for decades and is well known. This year, the topic has become part of presidential election politics thanks to Bernie Sanders. But while the situation has no public defenders, we have yet to see a single piece of legislation submitted to remedy the situation. That leaves the situation as a talking point rather than the focus of remedial action, which leads to the conclusion that those who talk about it don't care enough about it to do anything to reverse the situation. Example, since the financial crash of 2007 we have no bill to reintroduce Glass\Seagall, no bill to break up the too-big-to-fail banks (which are no bigger than before), no bill to back the U.S. out of the trade agreements that have shipped millions of American jobs overseas, no bill to increase taxes for the wealthy, etc. Instead, we see a majority of members of Congreess voting to maintain the status quo, which is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The cure? Step 1 is adoption of the We the People Amendment to get corporations and money out of the election process. https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment