The unequal distribution of wealth is increasing worldwide. While the rich have recently been able to increase their wealth, the poor in particular are suffering from economic crises and are becoming poorer and poorer. This is the result of a current study by the organization Oxfam.
Global inequality is getting worse: While the five richest men in the world have more than doubled their wealth since 2020, the five billion poorest people have lost several billion. This emerges from an Oxfam study published today on the global distribution of wealth in the world. Oxfam presented the study “Inequality Inc.” at the start of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.
According to this, the five richest men had a fortune of 405 billion US dollars in 2020. It has now grown to $869 billion. All billionaires have increased their wealth by $3.3 trillion since 2020 – while the almost five billion poorest people in the world have lost $20 billion in wealth.
“We need a tax on high wealth so that the super-rich also make their fair contribution to the common good,” demanded the executive chairwoman of Oxfam Germany, Serap Altinisik. Specifically, the organization advocates levying two percent taxes on assets over $5 million, three percent on assets over $50 million and five percent on assets exceeding $1 billion.
Five Germans own $155 billion
In Germany, too, the richest are getting richer and inequality continues to increase: the total assets of the five richest Germans have grown, adjusted for inflation, by around three quarters since 2020, from around 89 to around 155 billion US dollars.
If the taxes proposed by Oxfam were introduced in this country, around $93.6 billion in additional tax revenue could be generated in Germany alone. And this despite the fact that only a little more than 200,000 people in the Federal Republic have to pay the tax, it was said. That’s just 0.24 percent of the population.
For years, in addition to organizations like Oxfam, the rich have also been campaigning for higher taxation of their assets, such as the Austrian Marlene Engelhorn. She is an heir to BASF founder Friedrich Engelhorn and wants to donate 90 percent of her assets to the general public.