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Many of us are quite aware of the inequality in the distribution of the wealth to the point where the richest 1% pretty much have command of most of the wealth in the world.
This has been an increasing tread and with more tax cuts for the rich, their wealth only seems to increase at a phenomenal rate. The wealth distribution figures are increasingly disturbing with each passing year while the governments and politicians turn a blind eye to this as they force the general public into believing that the more wealth the rich command the more jobs for them.
Oxfam has published a report in which they have used data from Credit Suisse and Forbes’ annual billionaires list to determine that currently the richest 1 percent of the world’s population controls 48 percent of the world’s total wealth.
Oxfam has also warned that if this trend continues then by the year 2016 1% of the world’s population will posses more wealth than the remaining 99%.
Drill down the numbers even more and you’ll learn that the 80 wealthiest people in the world possess $1.9 trillion, which is almost the same amount shared by some 3.5 billion people at the bottom half of the world’s income scale.
Thirty-five of the lucky 80 were Americans with a combined wealth of $941 billion. Germany and Russia shared second place, with seven uber-rich individuals apiece.
Not surprisingly, the richest were titans in the finance, health care, insurance, retail, tech and extractives (oil, gas) industries, and they paid fortunes to lobbyists to maintain or increase their riches. Seventy of the world’s wealthiest were men. And 11 members of the elite 80 simply inherited their wealth.
“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined?” Oxfam executive director Winnie Byanyima said in a letter. “The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast.”
This week, more than 2,500 of the world’s rich and powerful will fly to Switzerland on hundreds of private jets to attend the World Economic Forum. There they will chat about the financial markets and economic trends while eating the finest food and staying in Davos’ five-star hotels.
Oxfam will also be in Davos, urging the wealthy and powerful to tackle the rising inequality situation. The charity hopes to encourage world and business leaders to improve public services, introduce living wages, end the gender pay gap and crack down on tax-dodging corporations, Reuters reported.
In the meantime, more than 1 billion people on this planet continue to live on less than $1.25 a day.
Check out the video below to help you understand how alarming the wealth inequality is, this video was released back in 2012 the crises has only deepened:
