Every 30 Hours, a New Billionaire and a Million Extremely Poor People Are Created

Oxfam International yesterday released a new report with a significant title – 'Profiting from Pain', which states that 573 wealthy individuals have transformed their status from 'millionaire' to 'billionaire' during the two pandemic years. More precisely, every 30 hours, the world has become richer by one billionaire.

On the other hand, Oxfam expects that in 2022, every 33 hours, a million people will become extremely poor. This alarming statistic of 263 million new poor people just this year is a result of rising living costs. While billionaires, who effectively control supply, will profit from this, hundreds of millions will barely have enough money to survive, warns Oxfam.

Grotesque Inequality

As Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International, stated during the report’s release, billionaires are not richer because they have become smarter or more valuable.

– It is the workers who are doing more, yet are paid less and work in worse conditions. Billionaires have amassed an incredible amount of wealth due to poor regulation, privatization, and monopolization, as well as the fact that they hoard their money in tax havens. At the same time, millions skip meals, save on energy, and wonder what the next thing they can do to survive is. This grotesque inequality has severed all the ties that hold us together as humans. This inequality is dangerous… It literally – kills – Bucher stated.

According to the research, 2668 billionaires hold 12.7 trillion dollars, and the ten richest people on the planet own more than 3.1 billion poor people. Oxfam believes that world governments urgently need to work on reducing inequality, taxing pandemic profits, and establishing new tax rates: two percent annually for millionaires and five percent for billionaires. This would create an additional 2.53 trillion dollars that should be invested in social protection programs, healthcare, and care for the poorest.