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THE RICHEST 1% of the world’s population now own more than the rest of us combined, according to new research by aid group Oxfam.
“Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population – a figure that has fallen from 388 just five years ago,” the anti-poverty agency said in a study published today.
The report, entitled “An Economy for the 1%”, found that the wealth of the poorest half has dropped by 41%, to €1.6 trillion, since 2010, despite an increase in the global population by around 400 million people during that period.
The study also states that women are disproportionately affected by the global inequality.
“One of the other key trends behind rising inequality set out in Oxfam International’s report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries… The majority of low paid workers around the world are women.”
Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality “the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months”, Oxfam said.
While the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10% has risen by less than €2.75-a-year in the past quarter of a century, a increase in individuals’ income of less than one cent a year, the report said.
‘Few dozen super-rich people’
Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanima said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.”
World leaders’ concerns about the escalating inequality crisis have “so far not translated into concrete action – the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating”, she warned.
As a priority, Oxfam is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centres to avoid paying taxes.
“This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality,” the report said.
As much as 30% of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, it added, costing an estimated €13 billion in lost tax revenues every year.
Getting hold of the proper level of taxes will be “vital” if world leaders are to meet their goal, set last September, of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.
Byanima challenged those attending the Davos meeting “to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty”.
Of the 62 people said to hold as much wealth as the poorest 50%, Oxfam said that 53 are men and just nine are female, highlighting that women are ill-represented even at the highest levels.
The NGO said it had calculated the wealth of the richest 62 people using Forbes’ billionaires list.
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It wouldn’t be so bad if at least one of them would take their responsibilities seriously and become Batman!
Love it!
The media always concentrates on the woman vs man side never on the fact we are all slaves In reality to this 1% that are not even known.
If this group of people were only content with their lot rather than manipulating world events and governments to suit their own agendas, then the world would be a better place to be in.
This vast inequality is the logical end result of capitalism which exploits the majority working class in order to enrich a minority of capital owners.
You always seem to confuse employing people with exploiting people.
Crony capitalism is the problem, not capitalism which has been responsible for lifting millions of people our of poverty.
Tell us the secret so for world economic equality? Let me guess, legislation by politicians by chance?
No confusion Ciaran. Capital only ever employs labour in order to exploit it to a greater or lesser degree. The sole objective of capitalist enterprise is the accumulation of profit and that profit is generated by the workers in the excess value they create over and above their wages. That is the essence of capitalism and it’s inherently exploitative.
So labour never receives the full value of the wealth it has created and over time this inevitably leads to the rising inequality described in the article.
It’s also important to differentiate between money and real wealth/resources. Money is how we measure wealth and also a claim on society’s resources. Our fiat currency money is created (and deleted) at will on the computer keyboards of the world’s commercial and central banks. At a macro level there can never be a shortage of a fiat floating currency like the Euro.
The real wealth of goods and services that we all depend on is created by the labour and skill of the working class from the raw material of the planet.
Money is a claim on that real wealth produced by the working class and this is where money derives it’s power. The capitalist system peddles the illusion that there is a shortage of money (balance the books, reduce the deficit, live within your means etc) in order to oppress and control the working class who are the real creators of wealth.
When I set up my own business, I remortgaged my house as well as pouring every penny of savings I had into it. The first 2 employees, we GUARANTEED their salary for 1 year, buy putting the funds in escrw. For the first two years of the business, I didn’t draw a salary and we traded a loss, which was funded out of the money the directors invested (coming from loans/savings).
If anything, I was the one being exploited,
We now employ 18 people and yes we make profit. But the profit ensures sustainability of the business and helps guarantee the security of the jobs going forward.
You living in a dream world. Socialism only works as long as you have other peoples money to spend.
Worth keeping in mind that by Oxfam’s own benchmark the vast majority of people in Ireland are in the world’s top 10% when it comes to wealth.
You sound like a decent enough employer Ciaran but nevertheless you are only employing those 18 people in order to confiscate the excess value they create over and above their wages as explained.
The wealth is created collectively but the profit is confiscated by the capital owner, you in this case. Capital never employs a single person or produces a single product or service without the expectation of profit though you delayed that expectation for 2 years in this case
This is how capitalism works and nothing you have described changes that. Over time the accumulated profits will make you progressively wealthier than your workers and we see the ultimate results of this on a global scale as described in the article.
Socialism is working all around you in every developed nation in the world. It’s manifested in universal health and education, public housing, social welfare system, 40 hour working week, public pensions, minimum wage etc etc. All the most civilized aspects of modern society are socialist in nature. None of these concessions were gifted by the capitalist class. They were fought for and won over centuries of struggle by the working class.
So in your world, what happens if a company trades a loss? Like Bus Eireann as an example? If you want profits shared equally are you as happy for employees to also take the burden of losses?
Also, for the first 2 years, should the employees have worked for free so there was no loss?
Things work differently on Planet Mooney.
As you mentioned Bus Eireann, I believe that public utilities like the transport network should be run on the basis of need and not for profit. This allows Bus Eireann to provide a service to sparsely populated rural areas for the people who need it and where the route will never be profitable. A nation which controls it’s own sovereign floating currency faces no financial constraints within that currency. Therefore if there are buses, fuel etc. available for purchase and drivers for hire then the state can always afford to provide the service if society decides that it’s needed.
If the enterprise was a co-operative one where the workers own the business collectively and share in the profit, then yes they would and should share in the loss in as far as it impacted the business. They may also collectively take the decision to work for no wages until the business was established as you did.
However, the capitalist system in the form of limited companies is designed to insulate the capital owner from personal losses if a business fails. So no, the employees should not share in the losses other than the loss of their jobs if the business collapses or makes a loss. As explained, the employer only gives workers a job in the first place in order to try and accumulate more money than they pay the workers in wages. Capitalist employment is not a charitable activity. This is not a moral judgment on you personally but an objective analysis of how capitalism works.
It’s also important to realize that you were also exploited by the capitalist system when you bought and remortgaged your house. Many people quite reasonably believe that the banks are loaning out the money that they hold on deposit (or fixed multiples thereof) when they issue loans but this is not a correct understanding of how banking works. In reality, a banking license is literally a license to create money.
Around 97% of the money in circulation in the world today is created electronically by the commercial banks when they issue loans. In issuing credit, banks simultaneously create a brand new deposit in the recipients bank account. Quite simply, the loan itself creates new money. The banks bring this new money into existence by pressing a computer keyboard, nothing more. Money doesn’t grow on trees but if you hold a banking license it grows on your IBM. The money is extinguished/retired as the borrower pays back the loan and the outstanding principal amount falls. The bank of course gets to charge interest on the loan which it created with a casual wag of a finger. This interest which the borrower must also find is not extinguished but is held by the bank as retained profits.
For most people, the biggest purchase of their lives will be the family home and so the mortgage will be the largest debt they ever undertake. A bank can create a €200,000 mortgage in a couple of seconds with a few keystrokes. Over a term of 25 years at an interest rate of 4% to 5%, you will pay somewhere between €110k and €150k in interest payments to the bank on top of the principal repayment. This means that a person on an average annual wage of €25k net will work for 4 to 6 years and hand every single cent that they earn in that time to the bank to repay interest on the money which the bank created from nothing in a matter of seconds.
This is the enormous power that has been granted to the private banks which they have used to massively exploit the rest of us through the debt mechanism.
Wally….I think Ciaran is like many other normal business people just trying to set up something successful for his and his families future. I don’t think he has plans at the moment and possibly not in the future to become one of the 62 mentioned in the article…he just wants a good business with happy employees. I’d say some of those 62 do make decisions that seriously affect peoples lives and environment in a negative way to make money…….but not all business people are like that, thankfully most do have morals.
Ciaran would have a point pre austerity when economics were more balanced, we now have a situation where the 1% continues to illegally accumulate wealth at the expense of what used to be the middle and working classes, if austerity affected across the board what Ciaran is saying would be true but what he can’t see is that he too is paying off the speculators and it’s not because of ‘socialists’ as he is conditioned to believe. Balance needs to be restored by whatever means, historically that was achieved at the ballot box or in more extreme cases revolution, either way change needs to happen.
Wally should there be any reward for Ciaran for taking the chance, investing his savings, remortgaging his home and working endless hours to build up his business? In your view should he get anything extra or the same as those he employs?
@Ciaran.. dont even try and argue with Mooney, he is just deluded.. His world sounds great, but who will pay for it..
He harps on about the banks lending money and generating in a few keystrokes.. Simple dont take a mortgage.. Save up all the money and buy it for cash.. Lets see how that works out for most people. The bank can lend you the money, why will they do it for the good of their own health. They are in it to make profit, the same as any business..
@Ciaran,
fair play man, you are a hard worker and we need a lot lot more like you.
Ciaran, take it from me – there is NO point challenging Wally. He’s a rabid communist with zero understanding of, or appreciation for, people who actually give people a job.
As far as Wally is concerned everyone should be paid the same somehow and also businesses should be prohibited from making a profit.
Go figure.
Unlike these rich bast@rds i have worked my way up to a state of extreme poverty… People ask me do i own my own house and car and i say yes but in reality the bank even owns this phone i write this message on…. Rant over……
It’s not enough, the government wants more Joe. IPhone Joan is onto you and your fancy phone. Toe the line and cough up.
It’s because God loves them more than the rest of us
Thanks P your really making me feel better….
God loves the coin. And gucci slippers.
But the devil wears Prada
Their puppets in governments make sure it stays that way. The rest of us enable this situation by voting for their lapdogs and listening to their owned media and state owned bullshit propaganda. No wonder they calll us Human Resources ffs.
You’re only as good as your production and consumption value unless you’re a woman as the article points out are amongst the lowest paid because they have a habit of getting pregnant so their production value is less than their male equivalents, this is the face of modern inequality the women always get the dirty end of the stick. We can look to our leaders to deliver the change that is needed for a fairer more equal society but our calls will fall on deaf ears as they represent the capitalist elite before their electorates interests, change needs to happen.
Oxfam CEO salary £119,560 (2012). In 2008 the required salary to enter the top 1% of earners in the UK was £99,727(2008)….
Perhaps she should start tackling income inequality in her own organization before critiquing government policy for not attacking the rich enough
Should also mention the organization pays no tax as a registered charity and relies on approx 7000 unpaid volunteers.
Still not as much as Angela kerins
One thing that strikes me though is that when you look at some of the highest net worth individuals, like Bill Gates and buffet, they are giving away everything they have and doing great things with their money. Their intentions seem sincere to me.
Take a guy like Elon Musk, started paypal with his brother sold it for 150 million…invested everything in space x and tesla. Hes not aiming to be rich, the guy just wanted to create, then the market dictates that his companies are worth 20 billion. A guy like that is not the problem.
Income inequality is obviously a problem, but to say look at the top 10 richest guys they are all evil greedy elites, its just not an honest appraisal of the situation.
Bill Gates doesn’t give all his money away. Look into that a bit more
What is also always left out of these tabloid reports, is the acknowledgement that as well as the wealth gap widening, the “poor” are also a lot less poor than they once were.
Money/wealth is not a finite resource shared out unequally, it’s a growing pool that the top 1% have an enormous share of, but the rest of us have more than we once did or our parents did.
Money at the to is just a number on a computer screen. If these top 1% tried to manifest it, it would bankrupt every government – it just doesn’t exist. The important figure is that global poverty has halved, and that is something real and a benefit of the creation of wealth. Taking the remainder of the world out of abject poverty is infinitely more important than worrying about the number of zeroes on warren buffets bank statements.
Maybe not all his money but he certainly seems to be using his wealth and power in a moral and commendable way.
Have a read up on Rockerfella and why his PR/media dept invented philanthropy, they don’t give money away out of generosity.
Socialists don’t see global wealth in the way you describe it. They see it as a finite figure divided unequally ! Sometimes they describe it as a cake. . Nice and simple for them to understand . Wealth creators do not exist to them. They tend to be people that don’t like working Anyway in my experience
Reganomics and Thatchers policies from the 80s started this trend!! Give the rich a break so they can create more jobs and wealth for the lower classes!!
This trend was started by the monopoly of power by Monarchy and Church in the Dark Ages whereby it seemed to become stamped onto people’s minds that power must be accompanied by ostentatious displays of wealth. The Enlightenment was an attempt to democratise power by educating people but the association remains that power and wealth go hand in hand. I think it shows a gross lack of imagination on the part of humanity.
Well, of course….they have now managed to convince taxpayers to cover any gambling loses…you often see such gullible taxpayers on here saying things like…it’s our debt…or….if we don’t pay them back they won’t invest again…..what a load of sheep. Baa baaaaa!
They’re not at fault, the system is, and we own the system, we just can’t be bothered to control it.
Pretty sobering figures but what is most startling is bono’s name was not mentioned once. Now, all things aside, that has to be perceived if indeed confirmed, as progress.
In fairness I think Bono has done more than most to combat poverty.
Eh, by choosing to form a complex corporate structure domiciled in the Netherlands to mitigate any tax he may incur in the jurisdiction he resides? Wake up, Bono is the same as anyone else of significant wealth -determined to protect and increase that wealth.
I’m well awake Karl.
I’m just prepared to bring balance to the argument and not point the finger at the rest of the world.
64 people have €1.3 trillion?
Obviously just to buy almost every government on the planet.
True capitalism is on it’s last legs.
Replaced by crony capitalism.
Ingenuity and creative thinking has been outlawed.
Replaced by a Matrix-esque control grid, where people beg and plead for their own Subjugation.
“just enough”
Take it off them. End of.
But I’d we don’t pay back the gambling debts Europe will disown us.. Enda, Michael even Joan says so..
So what
Laws of nature, attrition and the natural order. People still give out about it.
You think it’s natural?
Has anybody seen movie Elysium? That’s where we are heading.
And them few rich would have you believe it’s through hard work that they’ve gotten there bunch of criminals the lot of them
That kind of super concentration of wealth among a few individuals is dangerous. That’s how revolutions get started.
Maintaining strong economic growth is the only way in which poverty will be ended worldwide. Economists like Zia Quereshi and Dambisa Moyo have written important pieces on this. The focus going forward should not be on wealth redistribution but ensuring more people have access to share in rising economic growth.
Eat the Rich. They have not one nano second’s concern for anyone else on the planet beyond their own immediate circle.
The important thing Oxfam should be concentrating on is clean drinking water, adequate food supplies, vaccines for children and access to medications for the most needy.
There isn’t a finite amount of money in the world. The richest 62 people aren’t preventing poor African children from being vaccinated from measles in anyway.
Who are these wealthy fellows & can they spare me a 20 to get me through the week?
Not in Norway, at least in that extent, income gap is way fairer. You won’t get rich by being a doctor or a lawyer, but you will be able to live like a middle class by working in Mc Donalds. I had a good job offer in Norway 2 years ago thanks to some contacts I have made, they flew me over, all expenses paid. I turned down because I just love Ireland too much and basically Norway its beautifully boring. Seeing stories like these makes me wonder if I have made the right choice.
It’s not the 1% you have to worry about, it’s the 1% of the 1%!
I’m one of them……!!!!
Let’s just calm down remember money is not natural. We can create it out of thin air and destroy it out of thin air as we all know from our EU project. So let’s press the print button and make it all better. Problem solved
Rule 1 of economics is supply and demand. If there is more of something its value goes down.
Think about it using antiques, if there is a unique item, its price will be high, If there are many items then the price is much less.
Apply the same logic to money, if there is more of it, its relative value goes down and you will see prices for everything else going up (assuming other factors aren’t affected).
Snapmenu: if they did create it out of thin air do you really think they would let you stand at the end of the printing machine with a bag? You would have to hope for the “trickle down” effect.
All I will say about those 1% is “best of luck to them”. I wish I was one of them.
As long as it’s not your wife and daughters they use as a source of cheap disposable labour.
Hank scorpio you d1ck
The richest 1% globally in terms of income includes anybody earning over approximately 30,000 euro per annum. Therefore the average Irish person is in the top 1%. Makes you think!
Maybe so but the Irish economic system is designed so that after taxes and stealth taxes etc you end up with about 0 at the end of the year to invest and grow so in perspective it’s not really that much.
Now if you could earn Irish wages in eastern Europe…..
That private jet in the photo is only for cheapo millionaires who want to be billionaires.
The real rich reach higher.
The billionaire Donald Trump has a personalized Boeing 747.
.
Only the lower classes buy things worth less than ten million dollars.
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