- 62 individuals have the same wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people of the world (This figure is reduced from 388 individuals as recently as 2010.)
- $542 billion – the increase in wealth of the richest 62 individuals since 2010
- 50% the amount of the global wealth increase since 2000 received by the top 1%
- $1 trillion – the fall in wealth of the poorest 3.6 billion people since 2010 (a drop of 41%)
- Since 2000, the poorest half of the global population received only 1% of the increase in global wealth
- $3 rise in the average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world
1) Apologists for the status quo claim that concern about inequality is driven by ‘politics of envy’. They often cite the reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty as proof that inequality is not a major problem. But this is to miss the point. As an organization that exists to tackle poverty, Oxfam is unequivocal in welcoming the fantastic progress that has helped to halve the number of people living below the extreme poverty line between 1990 and 2010. Yet had inequality within countries not grown during that period, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty. That could have risen to 700 million had poor people benefited more than the rich from economic growth.
2) Rising economic inequality also compounds existing inequalities. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently found that countries with higher income inequality also tend to have larger gaps between women and men in terms of health, education, labour market participation, and representation in institutions like parliaments. The gender pay gap was also found to be higher in more unequal societies. It is worth noting that 53 of the world’s richest 62 people are men.
3) One of the key trends underlying this huge concentration of wealth and incomes is the increasing return to capital versus labour. In almost all rich countries and in most developing countries, the share of national income going to workers has been falling. This means workers are capturing less and less of the gains from growth. In contrast, the owners of capital have seen their capital consistently grow (through interest payments, dividends, or retained profits) faster than the rate the economy has been growing. Tax avoidance by the owners of capital, and governments reducing taxes on capital gains have further added to these returns. As Warren Buffett famously said, he pays a lower rate of tax than anyone in his office – including his cleaner and his secretary.
4) Oxfam’s experience with women workers around the world, from Myanmar to Morocco, is that they are barely scraping by on poverty wages. Women make up the majority of the world’s low-paid workers and are concentrated in the most precarious jobs. Meanwhile, chief executive salaries have rocketed. CEOs at the top US firms have seen their salaries increase by more than half (by 54.3%) since 2009, while ordinary wages have barely moved. The CEO of India’s top information technology firm makes 416 times the salary of a typical employee there. Women hold just 24 of the CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies.
5) A powerful example of an economic system that is rigged to work in the interests of the powerful is the global spider’s web of tax havens and the industry of tax avoidance, which has blossomed over recent decades. It has been given intellectual legitimacy by the dominant market fundamentalist world view that low taxes for rich individuals and companies are necessary to spur economic growth and are somehow good news for us all. The system is maintained by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professionals in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries. 6It is the wealthiest individuals and companies – those who should be paying the most tax – who can afford to use these services and this global architecture to avoid paying what they owe. It also indirectly leads to governments outside tax havens lowering taxes on businesses and on the rich themselves in a relentless ‘race to the bottom’.
6) In the garment sector, firms are consistently using their dominant position to insist on poverty wages. Between 2001 and 2011, wages for garment workers in most of the world’s 15 leading apparel-exporting countries fell in real terms. The acceptability of paying women lower wages has been cited as a key factor in increasing profitability. The world turned its attention to the plight of workers in garment factories in Bangladesh in April 2013, when 1,134 workers were killed when the Rana Plaza factory collapsed. People are losing their lives as companies seek to maximize profits by avoiding necessary safety practices. Despite all the attention and rhetoric, buyers’ short-term financial interests still dominate activities in this sector, as reports of inadequate fire and safety standards persist.
7) Inequality is also compounded by the power of companies to use monopoly and intellectual property to skew the market in their favour, forcing out competitors and driving up prices for ordinary people. Pharmaceutical companies spent more than $228m in 2014 on lobbying in Washington. When Thailand decided to issue a compulsory licence on a number of key medicines – a provision that gives governments the flexibility to produce drugs locally at a far lower price without the permission of the international patent holder – pharma successfully lobbied the US government to put Thailand on a list of countries that could be subject to trade sanctions.
Full Oxfam reports here includes full report, summary and methodology
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