The year 2012 was marked by economic meltdown followed austerity measures. That was the reality that everybody had to face. Well, except the those who created the crisis and are taking advantage from it.
The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of
$240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times
over, Oxfam has revealed, adding that the global economic crisis is further
enriching the super-rich.
“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent
in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing
the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater
growth, a new Oxfam report said.
For example, the luxury goods market has seen double-digit
growth every year since the crisis hit, the report stated. And while the
world's 100 richest people earned $240 billion last year, people in
"extreme poverty" lived on less than $1.25 a day.
Oxfam is a leading international philanthropy organization.
Its new report, ‘The Cost of Inequality: How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt us
All,’ argues that the extreme concentration of wealth actually hinders the
world’s ability to reduce poverty. The report was published before the World Economic Forum in
Davos next week, and calls on world leaders to “end extreme wealth by 2025, and
reverse the rapid increase in inequality seen in the majority of countries in
the last 20 years.”
The problem is a global one, Oxfam said: "In the UK
inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles
Dickens. In China the top 10 percent now take home nearly 60 percent of the
income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa,
which is now the most unequal country on Earth and significantly more
[inequality] than at the end of apartheid."
In the US, the richest 1 percent's share of income has
doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20 percent, according to the report. For the top
0.01 percent, their share of national income quadrupled, reaching levels never
seen before. “We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a
few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true,”
Executive Director of Oxfam International Jeremy Hobbs said.
Hobbs explained that concentration of wealth in the hands of
the top few minimizes economic activity, making it harder for others to
participate: “From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from
a global economic system which is rigged in their favor.”
The report highlights that even politics has become
controlled by the super-wealthy, which leads to policies “benefitting the
richest few and not the poor majority, even in democracies.”
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