Gap between rich and poor widening, warns Oxfam

The gap between rich and poor has widened, with the planet's richest 1 percent owning 45 percent of its wealth, while 44 percent of the population scrapes by on less than $6.85 a day, according to the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International.

Oxfam made the claim as political and business leaders gathered on Monday in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. The organization said the disparity between rich and poor has been "supercharged" since the start of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, with the soaring United States stock market and higher food and energy prices due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

"Very soon, Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire… Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years," Amitabh Behar, Oxfam's interim executive director, told The Associated Press.

Behar said the planet's five richest people — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and investor Warren Buffett — have seen their fortunes increase by 114 percent since 2020, and the prospect of someone amassing $1 trillion is now very real.

However, the fast-growing wealth of a few has coincided with many people becoming poorer, as 3.6 billion people now live below the poverty line.

The report said workers in low- and middle-income countries, who provide 90 percent of the global workforce, receive only 21 percent of the planet's income, with the Global North controlling more than two-thirds of wealth while having just one-fifth of its population.

"Nearly 60 years after the end of the colonial period, the global economy remains structured to siphon wealth from the Global South to the Global North," the report, titled Takers, Not Makers, observed.

The organization said the world should guard against the amount of influence billionaires have over the decision-makers as they are now able to "shape economic policies, social policies, which eventually gives them more and more profit".

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