During the Covid-19 epidemic, a new billionaire emerged every 30 hours, and nearly a million could fall into extreme poverty. Those are some sobering statistics.
The global charity said in a brief published on Monday that there were 573 more billionaires in the world by March 2022, compared to 2020. It equates to one new billionaire every 30 hours.
263 million people could be pushed into extreme levels of poverty by the year 2022, because of the Pandemic, growing global inequality and rising food prices that have been caused by the war in Ukraine. It is the equivalent of nearly a million people every 33 hours.
As of March, billionaires were worth $12.7 trillion. The amount of billionaire wealth was the equivalent of over 12% of global gross domestic product.
The executive director of the charity said that billionaires were arriving at the summit to celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes.
She said that the increases in food and energy prices have been a bonanza for them.
Millions of people are facing impossible rises in the cost of simply staying alive, as decades of progress on extreme poverty are now in reverse.
In the last two years, the fortunes of food and energy billionaires have increased by an average of $1 billion per day.
One of the companies that control more than 70% of the global agricultural market is the food giant. A net income of nearly $5 billion was generated by the corporation last year, making it the biggest profit in its history. The number of billionaires in the family has gone up from eight to 12.
40 new billionaires were created in the pharmaceuticals sector by the Pandemic. The billionaires profited from monopolies over vaccines, treatments, tests and personal protective equipment.
In order to support people with rising food and energy costs, and to prevent even starker wealth inequality, it was recommended that governments impose one-off solidarity taxes on the windfalls of billionaires.
The charity believes that governments should impose a temporary excess profit tax on windfalls generated by big corporations.
Extreme wealth, monopoly power, and the higher carbon emissions produced by the super-rich should be reined in by a permanent tax.
It said that a wealth tax of 2% on millionaires and 5% on billionaires could generate over $2 trillion a year. It would be enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the global population, and deliver universal health care and social protection for those living in low and lower-middle income countries.
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