Since 2020, the five richest men in the world (Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett) have more than doubled their fortunes – from $405 billion to $869 billion – at a rate of $14 million per year. ‘now, while 5 billion poorer people have seen their condition overall unchanged. At current rates, within a decade we could have the first trillionaire in the history of humanity, but it will take over two centuries (230 years) to end poverty. This is what emerges from ‘Inequality: power at the service of the few’, the new Oxfam report which in its photograph also zooms in on the EU, in which the top five Scrooges (Bernard Arnault, Amancio Ortega, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, Dieter Schwarz and Italian Giovanni Ferrero) see their assets grow at a rate of 5.7 million per hour from 2020.
The increase in extreme wealth in the last three years, explains Oxfam in the annual study it publishes on the occasion of the Davos forum, “has been powerful, while global poverty remains stuck at pre-pandemic levels”. Billionaires today are, in real terms, $3.3 trillion richer than in 2020, and their wealth has grown three times faster than the rate of inflation.
The increase in billionaires’ assets reflects the “extraordinary performance” of the companies they control. “2023 is set to be remembered as the most profitable year ever,” the report highlights. Overall, 148 of the world‘s largest companies made profits of approximately $1.8 trillion between June 2022 and June 2023, a 52.5% increase in profits compared to the average profit in the four-year period 2018-21. For every $100 of profits generated by 96 of the largest global giants, $82 flowed to shareholders in the form of dividends or share buybacks.
While companies managed to protect their profit margins during the most acute phase of the inflationary crisis, large segments of the workforce instead lost purchasing power. For nearly 800 million employed workers in 52 countries, wages have not kept pace with rising prices. The related wage bill saw a decline in real terms of 1,500 billion dollars in the two-year period 2021-2022, a loss equivalent to almost a monthly salary (25 days) for each worker.
In the analysis of economic disparities, Oxfam highlights how in 2020 international income inequality recorded the highest increase on an annual basis since 1990. An increase determined largely by the income dynamics in poor countries, which have suffered stronger repercussions from pandemic compared to advanced economies. Global wealth remains concentrated in the North of the world, where only 21% of the world population lives and owns 69% of net private wealth. The gap is also gender-based: men hold a wealth that exceeds that of women by 105 trillion dollars. For Oxfam, the extreme concentration of economic power and positional rents favor the accumulation of enormous fortunes for a few: the richest 1% in the world owns 59% of all financial securities. If you look at the largest multinationals, 7 out of 10 have a billionaire CEO or billionaire among their main shareholders.
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