{"id":228144,"date":"2023-01-30T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T12:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=228144"},"modified":"2023-01-27T04:58:51","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T04:58:51","slug":"how-much-are-you-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/01\/how-much-are-you-today\/","title":{"rendered":"How [Much] Are You Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

25 Jan 2023 – <\/em>Gone are those times when catastrophes were measured in terms of human suffering. Now, with an exception: Ukrainians victims of the Russian invasion, everything is calculated in just money.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\"Extreme<\/p>\n

Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. Credit: Clae<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Following such a solid trend, major financial, business-oriented institutions, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, are now devoted to calculating if and how big the recession will be, ergo, how much money could be won or lost due, of course, to the Ukrainian proxy war.<\/p>\n

They, likewise the establishment\u2019s politicians and media, just talk about inflation, stagflation, economic (read financial) slowdown and commerce.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rare mention is made of the victims and human suffering of the other 56 armed conflicts still spreading worldwide. Haitians do not matter, nor do Yemenis, Syrians, Somalis, Ethiopians, and a long list of human beings whose lives are broken by wars and climate disasters they did not cause.<\/p>\n

Inequality reaches highest peak ever<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

In yet another evidence of this trend, a global movement of people working together to end the injustice of poverty: Oxfam International<\/a>, has now revealed that the richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world over the past two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world\u2019s population, reveals Oxfam\u2019s new report \u201cSurvival of the Richest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in the past decade, and billionaires\u2019 fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, it reported<\/a> on 16 January 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cA tax of up to 5 percent on the world\u2019s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cSurvival of the Richest<\/a>\u201d was published on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In it, Oxfam explains, the elites are gathering in the Swiss ski resort as extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years.<\/p>\n

The rich\u2019s wildest dreams<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

\u201cWhile ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires \u2014a roaring \u201820s boom for the world\u2019s richest,\u201d said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today\u2019s overlapping crises. It\u2019s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow \u2018trickling down\u2019 to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn\u2019t lift all ships \u2014just the super-yachts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rich capture 16 trillion US dollars<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Billionaires have seen extraordinary increases in their wealth. During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while $16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together.<\/p>\n

A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent. Billionaire fortunes have increased by $2.7 billion a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains \u2014the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years, adds the report.<\/p>\n

Profiting from destruction<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

\u201cBillionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out $257 billion (84 percent) of that to rich shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oxfam further reports that the Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, received $8.5 billion over the last year. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, has seen this wealth soar by $42 billion (46 percent) in 2022 alone. Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US and the UK.<\/p>\n

At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people \u2014roughly one in ten people on Earth\u2014 are going hungry. Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 percent of the world\u2019s hungry population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2. Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many poorest people pay more taxes than billionaires<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Oxfam is calling for a systemic and wide-ranging increase in taxation of the super-rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering. Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fueled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires.<\/p>\n

It explains that Elon Musk, one of the world\u2019s richest men, paid a \u201ctrue tax rate\u201d of about 3 percent between 2014 and 2018. Aber Christine, a flour vendor in Uganda, makes $80 a month and pays a tax rate of 40 percent.<\/p>\n

And that worldwide, only four cents in every tax dollar now comes from taxes on wealth. Half of the world\u2019s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will pass on a $5 trillion tax-free treasure chest to their heirs, more than the GDP of Africa, which will drive a future generation of aristocratic elites. Rich people\u2019s income is mostly unearned, derived from returns on their assets, yet it is taxed on average at 18 percent, just over half as much as the average top tax rate on wages and salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vital 5 percent<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

According to new analysis by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and the Patriotic Millionaires, an annual wealth tax of up to 5 percent on the world\u2019s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 This figure would be enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, fully fund the shortfalls on existing humanitarian appeals, deliver a 10-year plan to end hunger, support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for everyone living in low- and lower-middle-income countries.<\/p>\n

Any chance that this will ever happen?<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Baher Kamal, <\/em>a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, <\/em>is an Egyptian-born, Spanish national, secular journalist, with over 45 years of professional experience \u2014 from reporter to special envoy to chief editor of national dailies and an international news agency. Baher is former <\/em>Senior Advisor<\/a> <\/em>to the Director General of the international news agency IPS (Inter Press Service)<\/a> and he also contributed to prestigious magazines such as <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>, GEO, Muy Interesante, and<\/em> Natura, Spain<\/em>. He is also publisher and editor of<\/em> Human Wrongs Watch.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 human-wrongs-watch.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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