Crises make the rich richer and the poor poorer

Over the past two years, a new billionaire has popped up about every 30 hours as moguls from the pharma, food, energy and tech industries reaped the rewards of a “rigged” economic system, Oxfam reported on Monday. With commodity prices skyrocketing, 263 million more people will crash into extreme poverty this year, unless the windfall is redistributed, the charity warned, directing the message to a gathering of the ultra-rich in the Swiss resort of Davos.

The release of the Oxfam report titled “Profiting from Pain” was timed with the first World Economic Forum to be held face-to-face since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Oxfam called on the wealthy and powerful individuals gathering this week in Switzerland to choose whether they wanted to be “proxies for the billionaire class who plunder their economies” or act in the interest of humankind.

“The extremely rich and powerful are profiting from pain and suffering. This is unconscionable,” Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International, warned. “This grotesque inequality is breaking the bonds that hold us together as humanity. It is divisive, corrosive, and dangerous. This is inequality that literally kills.”

According to Oxfam’s calculations, 573 people became new billionaires during the pandemic. The combined wealth of the class rose more in the first 24 months of the Covid-19 crisis than it did over the previous 23 years. The total wealth of billionaires equals 13.9% of global GDP now, up from 4.4% in 2000, the brief outlined.

The pharmaceutical, food, energy and tech sectors saw the biggest benefits from the transfer of wealth, Oxfam said. The pandemic created 40 new pharmaceutical billionaires as companies like Moderna and Pfizer enjoyed a bonanza from their vaccines against Covid-19.

The development of their products was funded by public investment, but despite this they are charging governments up to 24 times more than the cost of generic production, Oxfam argued. The vaccines alone brought Big Pharma $1,000 a second in profit, the group estimated.

www.rt.com/news/555942-wealth-inequality-covid-oxfam