An international charity says that the 10 wealthiest people should face a one-off super-tax amid rising financial inequality
A charity is calling on governments to unite to tax the world’s richest people an eyewatering 99% to reflect their pandemic profits.
Oxfam says that financial inequality is contributing to the death of 21,000 people a day, one every four seconds, and has calculated that there is a simple way to help address financial inequality that has been exacerbated by COVID.
Taxing the wealthiest more is often suggested, more so during the last two years, and a survey in 2021 showed that Canadians are in favour of greater taxation for the richest people, who they feel do not pay their fair share.
World leaders meet this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and will have much to consider amid uneven recovery from the pandemic and the threats of climate change.
It wants leaders to consider a one-off wealth tax on the world’s ten richest people, following research that shows how much billionaires have gained during the pandemic.
Record wealth gain
The figures reveal that global billionaires have seen their wealth surge by US$5 trillion since the pandemic began, the largest jump on record. While this wealthy cohort saw their fortunes rise 46% the bottom 90% of people saw their share of wealth drop in 2021.
A report published in September 2021 shows that Canada’s billionaires have increased their wealthy to a collective $100 billion.
“Inequality at such pace and scale is happening by choice, not chance, said Oxfam International’s executive director Gabriela Bucher. “Not only have our economic structures made all of us less safe against this pandemic, they are actively enabling those who are already extremely rich and powerful to exploit this crisis for their own profit.”
The charity says that if the world’s ten richest people – including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates – were taxed at a one-time 99% rate, it would generate enough revenue to make enough COVID vaccines for every person in the world; and provide universal healthcare and social protection, fund climate adaptation and reduce gender-based violence in over 80 countries.
It says that this could be achieved while still leaving the wealthy $8 billion better off than they were before the pandemic.
5 recommendations
Oxfam is urging governments to:
- Claw back the gains made by billionaires by taxing this huge new wealth made since the start of the pandemic through permanent wealth and capital taxes.
- Invest the trillions that could be raised by these taxes toward progressive spending on universal healthcare and social protection, climate change adaptation, and gender-based violence prevention and programming.
- Tackle sexist and racist laws that discriminate against women and racialized people and create new gender-equal laws to uproot violence and discrimination. All sectors of society must urgently define policies that will ensure women, racialized and other oppressed groups are represented in all decision-making spaces.
- End laws that undermine the rights of workers to unionize and strike, and set up stronger legal standards to protect them.
- Rich governments must immediately waive intellectual property rules over COVID-19 vaccine technologies to allow more countries to produce safe and effective vaccines to usher in the end of the pandemic.
