{"id":101961,"date":"2017-11-20T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=101961"},"modified":"2017-11-19T17:41:40","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T17:41:40","slug":"wealth-inequality-crisis-as-richest-1-percent-account-for-half-the-worlds-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/11\/wealth-inequality-crisis-as-richest-1-percent-account-for-half-the-worlds-wealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Wealth Inequality \u2018Crisis\u2019 as Richest 1 Percent Account for Half the World\u2019s Wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global inequality has worsened since the millennium, with a new report finding the richest 1 percent account for half of the world\u2019s wealth.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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14 Nov 2017 – <\/em>Global inequality has worsened since the millennium, with a new report<\/a> finding the richest 1 percent account for half of the world\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s top 1 percent held 45.5 percent of all household wealth in 2000. Now, they hold 50.1 percent, according to Credit Suisse\u2019s annual Global Wealth Report.<\/p>\n

The report highlights that Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs) \u2013 people who are worth more than $50 million \u2013 as being the driving force behind the gap. This group of wealth holders has grown five-fold since 2000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the bottom half of adults collectively own less than 1 percent \u00a0of total wealth, the richest decile (top 10 percent of adults) owns 88 percent of global assets, and the top percentile alone accounts for half of total household wealth,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

It was also the wealthy who benefited from the global fortunes following the 2008 global financial crisis with wealth inequality rising across all regions, except for China where median wealth declined.<\/p>\n

The report offers a reminder that anti-poverty groups aren\u2019t the only ones publishing eye-popping numbers on global inequality; the severe numbers are also being confirmed by the financial services firms that specialize in helping the rich grow their assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt fits broadly along with the things we really noticed this year \u2014 that is, the massive increase of wealth in just one unit,\u201d Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at Oxfam International, said of today\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

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The top 1 percent own have the global wealth, according to Credit Suisse.
Credit Suisse\/James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shorrocks.<\/p><\/div>\n

The report comes a little more than a week after ICIJ and more than 90 media partners around the world released the Paradise Papers<\/a>, an investigation that seeks to shed light on the offshore financial services<\/a> industry, a significant driver of greater shares of wealth accumulating at the top.<\/p>\n

The investigation revealed ways in which the offshore world offers billionaires and the companies they own a means to reduce their taxes under a deep veil of financial privacy, allowing them to grow their assets in dazzling exponentials.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a direct link between tax havens and this explosion in the wealth of the super-rich which we see in the report today,\u201d Lawson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re using industrial levels of tax avoidance to make sure their fortunes are shielded from the tax man. They\u2019d be less wealthy if they paid the tax they owe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The world\u2019s wealth levels in 2017, according to the latest Credit Suisse report.
Credit Suisse\/James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shorrocks.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Paradise Papers<\/a> investigation, based on a trove of millions of leaked files from leading offshore law firm Appleby, \u00a0shed light on the use of these havens by some of the world\u2019s wealthiest individuals.<\/p>\n

The files revealed that James Simons, a hedge fund billionaire and top US political donor, used the low-tax jurisdiction of Bermuda to quietly grow one of the largest private\u00a0trust funds ever discovered<\/a>. It also showed how\u00a0multinational corporations<\/a> like Apple<\/a> and Nike\u00a0<\/a>have avoided billions in taxes, often using mazes of offshore entities that shift earnings and assets overseas \u2014 away from public scrutiny and tax collectors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe offshore industry makes \u201cthe poor poorer\u201d and is \u201cdeepening wealth inequality,\u201d Brooke Harrington, a certified wealth manager and Copenhagen Business School professor, told ICIJ\u2019sreporters for the Paradise Papers investigation.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is this small group of people who are not equally subject to the laws as the rest of us, and that\u2019s on purpose,\u201d Harrington said.<\/p>\n

While the Paradise Papers provide a view into the elaborate mechanisms by which the wealthy move their assets away from public coffers, today\u2019s Credit Suisse report shows how these maneuvers have manifested in broad terms, although the report does not name offshore services providers or tax avoidance as drivers of its findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is clearly a crisis\u2026 and it is a crisis that is getting a lot worse.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>
\n— Max Lawson<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The report states that half the world\u2019s population \u2014 3.5 billion adults with wealth below $10,000 \u2014 account for just 2.7 percent of global wealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn contrast\u2026the 36 million millionaires comprise less than 1% of the adult population, but own 46% of household wealth,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

The growth of \u201cfinancial assets,\u201d commonly defined as stocks, bonds and other investments, has outpaced the growth of real assets, like homes and land \u2014 with the rich benefiting handsomely from this trend.<\/p>\n

This has been most true, according to the report, in wealthier countries, where \u00a0millionaires and billionaires fare far better than those in poor countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States continued its remarkable unbroken spell of gains after the financial crisis,\u201d the report states, noting that many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Africa saw growth of less than one percent \u2013 or even shrinking overall wealth. Credit Suisse attributed this to \u201cadverse currency movements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is clearly a crisis,\u201d said Oxfam\u2019s Lawson. \u201cAnd it is a crisis that is getting a lot worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 icij.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Nov 2017 – The world\u2019s top 1 percent held 45.5 percent of all household wealth in 2000. Now, they hold 50.1 percent, according to Credit Suisse\u2019s annual Global Wealth Report. The report highlights that Ultra High Net Worth Individuals \u2013 people who are worth more than $50 million \u2013 as being the driving force behind the gap. This group of wealth holders has grown five-fold since 2000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}