Super-rich:
62 People Own As Much As Half The World
Report by UK charity Oxfam calls for a crackdown on
tax havens as the world's wealthiest hide $7.6
trillion from taxes.
By Al Jazeera
January 18, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"Al
Jazeera" -
The world's richest 62 people now own as much wealth
as half of the world's population, according to a
report by the charity Oxfam.
Super-rich individuals saw an increase of 44
percent since 2010, taking their cumulative
wealth to $1.76 trillion - equivalent to the
total owned by 3.5 billion of the world's
poorest people.
The
UK-based charity on Monday also said tax havens were
helping corporations and individuals to stash away
about $7.6 trillion, depriving governments of $190bn
in tax revenue every year.
Speaking to
Al Jazeera, Helen Szoke, Oxfam Australia's chief
executive, said that there were no appropriate
mechanisms to check if wealth was being shared
appropriately.
"We believe
there is a need for commitments from global business
leaders and political leaders for major tax reform
to get rid of the tax havens," Szoke said.
"There's
too much leakage of what should be paid in taxation
exacerbating this gap [between rich and poor]."
Referring
to economic growth in Western countries, such as her
native Australia, Szoke said little wealth was
reaching the impoverished.
"The
startling figure in our domestic context in
Australia is that where there has been wealth
generation in the past decade, none of that has
actually trickled down to some of the
Australians who are poor."
Lack of action
Oxfam said
wealth was being concentrated in the hands of
increasingly fewer people, while the world's poorest
continued to get poorer. In 2010 some 388 people
owned as much as the world's poorest 50 percent.
Mark
Goldring, Oxfam chief executive in the United
Kingdom, said that the stated concern of world
leaders over escalating inequality was not being
matched with action.
"It is
simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the
world population owns no more than a small group of
the global super-rich, so few you could fit them all
on a single coach.
"In a world
where one in nine people goes to bed hungry every
night, we cannot afford to carry on giving the
richest an ever-bigger slice of the cake," Goldring
said.
The
organisation is calling on world leaders meeting for
the World Economic Forum in the Swiss city of Davos
later this month to crack down on tax havens, ensure
fair wages, and invest in public services.
Richest 1% Now Wealthier Than the
Rest of the World, Oxfam Says
By Simon
Kennedy
January 18,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Bloomberg"
- The
richest 1 percent is now wealthier than the rest of
humanity combined, according to Oxfam, which called
on governments to intensify efforts to reduce such
inequality.
In a report
published on the eve of the World Economic Forum’s
annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the
anti-poverty charity cited data from Credit Suisse
Group AG in declaring the most affluent controlled
most of the world’s wealth in 2015. That’s a year
earlier than it had anticipated.
Oxfam also
calculated that 62 individuals had the same wealth
as 3.5 billion people, the bottom half of the global
population, compared with 388 individuals five years
earlier. The wealth of the most affluent rose 44
percent since 2010 to $1.76 trillion, while the
wealth of the bottom half fell 41 percent or just
over $1 trillion.
The charity
used the statistics to argue that growing inequality
poses a threat to economic expansion and social
cohesion. Those risks have already been noted in
countries from the U.S. to Spain, where voters are
increasingly backing populist political candidates,
while it’s sown tensions on the streets of Latin
America and the Middle East.
“It is
simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the
world’s population owns no more than a few dozen
super-rich people who could fit onto one bus,” said
Winnie Byanima, executive director of Oxfam
International. “World leaders’ concern about the
escalating inequality crisis has so far not
translated into concrete action.”
Oxfam said
governments should take steps to reduce the
polarization, estimating
tax havens help the rich to hide $7.6 trillion.
Politicians should agree on a global approach to
ending the practice of using offshore accounts, it
said.
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