Billionaires’ share of global wealth soars during pandemic

The global wealth share of the world’s richest people soared at a record rate during the Covid pandemic, a report on inequality has shown. Since 1995, the share owned by billionaires has risen from one per cent to three percent, according to the World Report on Inequality. “This increase was exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. In fact, 2020 marked the steepest rise in the share of billionaires in the world’s wealth, ”the document says. The richest one percent club has taken more than a third of all the additional wealth accumulated since 1995, while the bottom 50 percent captured just two percent.

“After more than 18 months of Covid-19, the world is even more polarised,” Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Laboratory at the Paris School of Economics, told AFP. While the wealth of billionaires increased by more than 3.6 trillion euros ($ 4 trillion), 100 million more people joined the ranks of extreme poverty,” Chancel said, noting that extreme poverty it had previously been declining for 25 years. A real-time ranking from Forbes magazine shows that the 10 richest people each have a net worth that exceeds $ 100 billion, with Tesla boss Elon Musk at the top with around $ 265 billion.

Only one of the men is not American, the head of the luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault, and all but two are leaders of the technology industry whose fortunes have been accelerated by the increase in the prices of shares of the company. According to the report, the 52 richest people in the world have seen the value of their wealth grow by 9.2 percent annually over the past 25 years, well above the least wealthy social groups. The share of women in total world labor income was less than 35 percent, up from 30 percent in 1990, but below parity with men. Europe was the most egalitarian region in the world, with the richest 10 percent taking 36 percent of the income share, while the Middle East and North Africa were the most unequal, with the top 10 percent taking rich in society kept 58 percent of the income.

Chancel, lead author of the study, said that state intervention was crucial in the fight against poverty, but that richer nations were able to act more during the coronavirus pandemic. Rich countries introduced measures such as licensing and increased social security payments during the crisis to prop up income levels and save jobs, which states with fewer resources did not replicate. The 228-page report, whose contributors include French economist Thomas Piketty, calls for a “modest progressive tax on wealth for global billionaires” to redistribute wealth, along with measures to prevent tax evasion. Given the large volume of wealth concentration, modest progressive taxes can generate significant revenue for governments,” the report says. He added that current taxes are overly directed at property and should instead include all forms of wealth, particularly financial assets, which are at the core of modern fortunes. The authors also recommended the creation of an international financial register to allow authorities to monitor assets and capital income of taxpayers and reduce tax evasion.

Guardian