That person would have to spend $1m every day for 2,738 years in order to use their entire fortune.
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These Are the World’s 8 Richest People: 1.
The eight wealthy individuals also include Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of Inditex, which owns brands including Zara, and Michael Bloomberg, who owns Bloomberg LP. Warren Buffett: American CEO and largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (net worth $60.8 billion) 4. Carlos Slim Helú has a net worth of $50bn, while Bezos and Zuck have roughly $45bn each.
“An economy for the 99 percent” was prepared using Forbes’ billionaires list.
Oxfam claimed “corporations from many sectors – finance, extractives, garment manufacturers, pharmaceuticals and others – use their huge power and influence to ensure that regulations and national and worldwide policies are shaped in ways that enable continued profitability”.
Oxfam’s report indicates that inequality in wealth distribution has increased significantly since previous year when it had said that 62 of the world’s richest people own half its wealth. In the US, the richest 1% control 42% of the wealth.
Oxfam challenges governments and corporations to address the problem of tax havens, “which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty”.
While approximately 3.6 billion people worry about paying their utility bills and buying food, just a handful of billionaires own half of the world’s wealth.
New research released today by Oxfam shows that the richest one percent of New Zealanders hold 20 percent of the country’s total wealth, while 90 percent of the population account for less than half the nation’s wealth. (See Part II of IPS series). As Mark Goldring, Oxfam’s CEO writes in a Guardian Op-Ed explaining the report, numerous top eight are also among the world’s most prominent philanthropists.
Previous research by Oxfam estimates that tax dodging by Australian-based multinationals is costing almost $6 billion a year in tax revenue in Australia and depriving developing countries of almost $3 billion annually.
Inequality is leading to a new “gilded age” for the super rich, who have grown their wealth by 11 per cent annually in recent years. Narrowing the gap between the richest and the rest requires us to take on a more challenging task than asking eight men to change their behaviour.
There’s also a big gender disparity.
False assumption #1: The market is always right, and the role of governments should be minimized… It is stopping us from being able to work together for a better society. Instead, the emergence of a new gilded age, with vast amounts of wealth concentrated in too few hands – the majority male – is economically inefficient, politically corrosive, and undermines our collective progress.
Companies should work to benefit everyone, the report stated.
A human economy would work equally as well for women as it does for men.
A society with so much inequality isn’t economically sustainable, Ravon added. How come that nothing effective has been done do far to prevent it or at least reduce it?
While experts may disagree on the causes, the impacts of rapidly growing inequality are becoming increasingly clear: the decline of trust and social cohesion, the threats to democracy, the impact on economic growth of shrunken demand.
“It will also mean taking on and overcoming the powerful interests of the super-rich and corporations who are benefiting from the status quo“. Little wonder global inequality and the rise of populism seem to be dominating the conversation as world leaders descend on Davos.
The 2015 survey, published in June a year ago, found the country’s household wealth was concentrated in the top 20 percent of households, which held about 70 percent of total household net wealth.
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The gap is not just between poor and rich countries; inequality is entrenched in both.
