On the occasion of the opening of the Davos Forum on Monday, Oxfam once again draws up a scathing observation on the state of the distribution of wealth in the world. “Each billionaire represents a failure of public policy”, advances the NGO in a report, campaigning for a halving of their number by 2030 thanks to taxation, before “abolishing” the billionaires in the longer term.
“Economic inequality has reached extreme and dangerous levels,” writes the international organization in its annual report on inequality, kicking off exchanges between economic and political elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos until January 20. Driven by soaring stock market prices, large fortunes have soared over the past ten years: out of 100 dollars of wealth created, 54.4 dollars have gone into the pockets of the wealthiest 1%, while 70 cents have benefited the bottom 50%.
The “crucial” role of taxation
The billionaires have doubled their fortunes, while being more and more numerous, affirms Oxfam whose director general, Gabriela Bucher, is invited to Switzerland. However, “the extreme concentration of wealth undermines economic growth, corrupts politicians and the media, corrodes democracy and increases polarization”, writes the NGO, adding that inequality has become “an existential threat to our societies, paralyzing our ability to curb poverty”, and put “the future of the planet (…) in danger”.
According to the organization, taxation has a “crucial” role to play in order to reduce the number of billionaires on the planet, and must affect the income and capital of the wealthiest. Among the measures proposed in this report, an exceptional tax on wealth, a tax on dividends, and an increase in taxation on the income from work and capital of the richest 1%. Capital, a financial windfall “much more important than wages” for the great fortunes, must be taxed more on the gains made, in particular through the sale of shares, but also by the simple possession, underlines the organization.
The “superprofits” of companies are also in the sights of Oxfam, which is proposing to tax windfall profits more, like the billions recorded by oil groups in recent months thanks to the surge in energy prices, against a background of war in Ukraine. According to the NGO, these measures would bring back the fortunes of billionaires and their number to what they were in 2012, before the numbers got carried away.