(MENAFN- Khaama Press)
The world's billionaires are accumulating wealth at a rate“unprecedented in human history,” according to a recent report from Oxfam International.
The charitable organization's“Inequality Kills” the report found that the planet's 2,755 billionaires saw their cumulative wealth increase by $5 trillion — a sum greater than the market caps of Apple and Amazon combined — since March 2021, from $8.6 trillion to $13.8 trillion.
“Billionaire wealth has grown more since the pandemic began than it has in the last 14 years,” the report says. That growth has been fueled by government intervention around the world, which has propped up economies and driven up stock prices, the report says.
The growth in wealth has been so great over such a short period of time that“wealth concentration at the very top now surpasses the peak of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century,” Oxfam says.
Indeed, since 1995 the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world have seen 19 times more wealth growth than the bottom 50%, the report says.
“If these 10 men were to lose 99.999% of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on this planet,” said Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam's executive director.“They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”
Author
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.