PUSH the wealth of billionaires in a few years it has jumped so impressively that the first billionaire on a global level, it could be crowned in just ten years.
The prediction comes from Oxfam, which in its latest report on global inequalitypublished on January 15, 2024, showed in numbers and estimates how big the difference is between the two richincreasingly wealthy and stilts – on the rise – is the alarm of our time.
As of 2020, the combined assets of the company will be 5 richest men in the world more than doubled to $869 billion, while 5 billion people became poorer, read more Inequality.
Oxfam’s report comes as globally relevant business, political and institutional elites gather at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos under the slogan “Rebuilding Trust”. The urgent and alarming topic of social and economic inequality becomes essential precisely in the context of an increasingly fragmented, depressed and tense world.
While the first billionaire in history is about to achieve its goal $1 trillion in assets, most of the world’s population risks disaster. The the gap between the rich and the poor it has never been so disturbing. Reasons in the Oxfam report.
Who will be the world’s first billionaire?
Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett are the 5 richest men in the world (according to the Forbes ranking) and among them the world’s first billionaire in a span of just 10 years.
That’s what Oxfam said in its latest report on inequality. Five men are worth (by net worth) a total of $869 billion after growing their wealth at a rate $14 million an hour in the last four years.
Global billionaires are today wealthier than $3.3 trillion than they were in 2020, while the billionaire heads 7 of the world’s 10 biggest companies, the London-based charity said.
Oxfam added that if each of the five richest men spent a million dollars a day, it would take 476 years to exhaust their combined wealth. Numbers and hypotheses that offer a less than reassuring picture of global society.
The numbers are the most relevant findings of the report, in which you can read a growing inequalitysynonym for tension and imbalance:
- L’The richest 1% in the world own 43% of total financial assets;
- the richest 1% of the world emits the same amount of pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity;
- It reached 148 large companies profits of 1800 trillion dollars52% higher than the 3-year average;
- only 0.4% of over 1,600 of the world’s largest and most influential companies have committed to paying their employees decent salary;
- Globally, men own $105 trillion more in wealth than women
“We are witnessing the beginning of a decade of division, with billions of people bearing the economic shock waves of pandemics, inflation and war, while the fortunes of billionaires grow. This inequality is not accidental; the billionaire class ensures that corporations provide them with more wealth at the expense of everyone else.”Oxfam International Interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar pointed out.
Evidence of such alarm is the calculation that if current trends continue, the world will have his first billionaire in ten years, but poverty will not be eradicated for another 229 years. The risk of increasingly significant inequality is real. The consequences can be dramatic, fueling frustration, instability, social and political unrest.
