Digital Desk: According to a new study released on Monday, incomes of 99 percent of humanity fell during the first 2 years of Pandemic, and more than 16 crore people were forced into poverty, even as the world's ten wealthiest men saw their fortunes more than double to USD 1.5 trillion (over 111 lakh crore) at a rate of USD 1.3 billion (Rs 9,000 crore) per day.
In its report titled 'Inequality Kills' released on the first day of the World Economic Forum's online Davos Agenda summit, Oxfam International said inequality contributes to the deaths of at least 21,000 people per day, or one person every day four seconds.
According to the report, this is a cautious estimate based on mortality caused by a lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, starvation, and climate change around the world.
During the first 2 years of the pandemic, the world's ten wealthiest men saw their fortunes expand at a rate of USD 15,000 every second, and even if they lost 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be wealthier than 99.999 percent of the world's population.
"They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people," said Oxfam International's Executive Director Gabriela Bucher.
"It has never been so important to start righting the violent wrongs of this obscene inequality by clawing back elites' power and extreme wealth including through taxation - getting that money back into the real economy and to save lives," she said.
According to Oxfam, billionaires' wealth increased more in the recent 14 years than in the previous 14 years when COVID-19 began. This is the largest increase in billionaire wealth since records began, at USD 5 trillion.
For example, a one-time 99 percent tax on the ten richest men's pandemic windfalls could pay for enough vaccines for the entire world, universal healthcare and social protection, climate adaptation, and gender-based violence reduction in over 80 countries, while still leaving these men USD 8 billion better off than before the pandemic.
"Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom. Vaccines were meant to end this pandemic, yet rich governments allowed pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off the supply to billions of people," said Bucher.
She alleged that the world's response to the pandemic unleashed this economic violence acutely across racialized, marginalized, and gendered lines.
"As COVID-19 spikes this turns to surges of gender-based violence, even as yet more unpaid care is heaped upon women and girls," Bucher said.
The study showed that the pandemic set gender parity back from 99 years to 135 years.
In 2020, women collectively lost USD 800 billion in earnings, with 1.3 crores fewer women working than in 2019. 252 males own more money than the aggregate wealth of one billion women and girls in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
It went on to say that the pandemic has struck racialized groups the worst.
Persons of Bangladeshi ancestry were five times more likely than White British people to die of COVID-19 during the second wave of the pandemic in England. In Brazil, black people are 1.5 times more likely than white people to die from COVID-19. According to Oxfam, if Black Americans had the same life expectancy as White Americans, 34 lakh more would be alive today.
According to the report, for the first time in a generation, global inequality is predicted to rise.
Developing countries have been compelled to cut social spending and are now facing austerity measures due to a lack of vaccines due to wealthier governments' protection of pharmaceutical monopolies. According to Oxfam, the proportion of people with COVID-19 who die from the virus in developing countries is roughly double that in developed countries.
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