The world’s wealthiest five men have more than doubled their fortune since 2020, the charity Oxfam said on Monday, calling on nations to resist the ultra-rich’s influence over tax policy.
A report from the charity, published as the global elite hobnob at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, said their wealth rose from $405 billion in 2020 to $869 billion last year.
Yet since 2020, nearly five billion people worldwide have grown poorer, Oxfam said.
Billionaires are today $3.3 trillion richer than they were in 2020, despite many crises devastating the world’s economy since this decade began, including the Covid pandemic.
“We cannot continue with these levels of obscene inequality,” Amitabh Behar, the interim director of Oxfam International, told AFP.
He said it showed that “capitalism is at the service of the super-rich”.
With riches among the world’s wealthiest increasing the way they are, he predicted that within a decade the world will see its first “trillionaire”.
Oxfam’s yearly report on inequality worldwide is traditionally released just before the Davos forum opens on Monday in the Swiss Alpine resort of the same name.
The charity raised concerns over increasing global inequality, with the richest individuals and companies amassing not only greater wealth thanks to surging stock prices, but also significantly more power.
