Every 26 hours, a new billionaire is created, although inequality is a factor in one person’s passing every four seconds.

The rich become richer during COVID19 pandemic

The world’s ten richest men doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion — at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day — during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen 99 percent of humanity’s incomes fall and 160 million more people forced into poverty.

According to Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher, a 99.999 percent loss of wealth would still leave these ten men wealthier than 99 percent of the world’s population. They have six times more wealth than 3.1 billion poor people.

Oxfam’s “Inequality Kills” briefing, published today ahead of the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda, says inequality kills at least 21,000 people per day, or one person every four seconds. This is a conservative estimate based on deaths from lack of healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate change.

“It has never been more critical to claw back elites’ power and extreme wealth through taxation, reinvesting that money into the real economy and saving lives.

The rich become richer during COVID19 pandemic

Since COVID-19 began, billionaires’ wealth has risen more than in the previous 14 years. This is the most significant increase in billionaire wealth since records began. A onetime 99% tax on the ten richest men’s pandemic windfalls could pay:

global vaccine production universal healthcare, social protection, climate adaptation, and gender-based violence reduction in 80 countries;

These men are $8 billion richer after the pandemic.

Billionaires are infected. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, which went to billionaires riding the stock market boom. Rich governments allowed pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off billions of people’s vaccine supply.

As a result, every kind of inequality is at risk. Its predictability sickens me. It kills.

Extreme inequality is economic violence that harms most ordinary people worldwide and the planet itself.

The world’s response to the pandemic unleashed economic violence across racial, marginalized, and gendered lines. As COVID-19 rises, gender-based violence surges, and women and girls receive more unpaid care.

The pandemic setback gender parity by 135 years. 13 million fewer women worked in 2020, costing women $800 billion in earnings. Two hundred fifty-two men own over 1 billion African, Latin America, and Caribbean women and girls combined.

The rich become richer during COVID19 pandemic

Localized groups are the most brutal hit. During the second pandemic wave in England, Bangladeshis were five times more likely than White Britons to die from COVID-19. Black Brazilians have a 1.5-fold higher COVID-19 death rate than Whites.

If Black Americans had the same life expectancy as Whites, 3.4 million would be alive today. This is because of historical racism and colonialism.

First time in a generation, global inequality will rise. Rich governments’ protection of pharmaceutical monopolies has denied developing countries access to enough vaccines, forcing them to cut social spending as debt levels spiral. They now face austerity measures. In developing countries, COVID-19 deaths are double those in rich countries.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the motive of greed and the opportunity by political and economic means,” said Bucher. “Oxfam’s shocking but inevitable conclusion after years of research and campaigning”

Despite the cost of fighting the pandemic, rich country governments have failed to increase taxes on the wealthy and have continued to privatize vaccine science. They’ve encouraged corporate monopolies so much that market concentration could increase more in one year than in the 15 years from 2000 to 2015.

The rich become richer during COVID19 pandemic

The wealthiest 1% emits more CO2 than the poorest 50% of the world, driving climate change in 2020 and 2021 that has contributed to wildfires, floods, tornadoes, crop failures, and hunger.

Such rapid and massive inequality is deliberate. Our economic structures make us all less safe against the pandemic and allow the rich and powerful to profit from it.

A higher tax rate on the wealthy and action against monopolies are mentioned in the report. It gives us hope for a new economic consensus.

We urge governments to increase the tax for the rich individual and their company. The Malaysian government increases the tax for that health care provider as a valued add tax for 2 years.

Since the pandemic began, permanent wealth and capital taxes can claw back billionaires’ gains.

Transform these taxes into trillions for universal healthcare, social protection, climate change adaptation, and gender-based violence prevention and programming.

The rich become richer during COVID19 pandemic

Create gender-equal laws to end violence and discrimination caused by sexist laws. All sectors of society must ensure women, races, and other oppressed groups are represented in decision-making spaces.

End the laws undermine workers’ rights to unionize and strike and strengthen protections.

The rich become richer during  COVID19 pandemic

Rich governments must waive intellectual property rules on COVID-19 vaccine technologies to help end the pandemic.

Money is not scarce. Governments released $16 trillion to fight the pandemic. Only courage and imagination are needed to escape extreme neoliberalism’s deadly straitjacket. Governments should listen to movements demanding justice and equality, including young climate strikers, Black Lives Matter activists, #NiUnaMenos feminists, and Indian farmers.

What is left for the middle class and the poor, and what should the government do to eradicate inequality?

Do you keep your job? Or have a pay cut or even be retrenched by the company. Do you have other sources of income to keep up with essential daily needs? It would be better to have unlimited passive income to top in. Do you have it?

I would welcome any comments in the box below.