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Global wealth inequality widened last year as billionaires increased their fortunes by $2.5 billion per day, anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam said in a new report.
While the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth dwindle by 11%, billionaires' riches increased by 12%. The mega-wealthy have also become a more concentrated bunch. Last year, the top 26 wealthiest people owned $1.4 trillion, or as much as the 3.8 billion poorest people. The year before, it was the top 43 people.
[...] To address many of these ills, Oxfam advocated raising taxes. It estimated that a 1% wealth tax would be enough to educate 262 million out of school children and to save 3.3 million lives. As of 2015 returns, Oxfam says that only four cents in every tax dollar collected globally came from tariffs on wealth, such as inheritance or property. The report also claims that the rich are hiding $7.6 trillion in offshore accounts
Previously: Only 1% of World's Population Grabbed 82% of all 2017 Wealth
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 23 2019, @03:58AM
What's going on in the first part is that developed world people with net debt are collecting underneath the poorest people in the world. By the perversely screwy measure of wealth inequality that Oxfam uses, if you're a beggar in Somalia, you're worth $40k more than a recent US college grad with a new $50k a year job at a top 100 firm and $40k in student loans with no present assets to speak of. That college grad can continue to be the "poorer" person as they borrow to buy a house, and maybe pay off some credit cards they grew too loose with, all the while enjoying a vastly better standard of living than the "wealthier" Somalian beggar.
Now suppose that developed world underhang happens to borrow more money this year than they did last year? Now your "poorest 50%" are suddenly significantly lower net asset than before due to the increase in debt.
If we had treated income as part of wealth rather than stupidly ignoring it, then the college grad would have a lot of wealth in the form of future income - so a more accurate balance sheet might have $700k in present value of future income versus $40k in debt - all inflation adjusted, resulting in a net wealth of $660k. The Somalia beggar might have a annual income of $100, and thus, a net wealth of perhaps $1400 using the same multiplier, career span, etc.
Moving on to the billionaire side, the killer observation is that there was a substantial increase in the number of billionaires from last year, from 2043 to 2208 [wikipedia.org] (I was in error the last time I reported this number). It's an 8% increase in the number of people who are billionaires. There probably is some natural increase in the wealth of these billionaires, but the Oxfam report blows off both the increase in population and inflation.