Pandemic produces a billionaire every 26 hours, says Oxfam

While the income of 99% of humanity fell during the pandemic, a new billionaire emerged every 26 hours, and the ten richest men in the world more than doubled their fortunes, comparing March 2020 and November 2021.

The data is from an unprecedented report by Oxfam and also shows that the fortunes of the ten richest people in the world went from US$ 700 billion (R$ 3.87 trillion) to US$ 1.5 trillion (R$ 8.3 trillion). ) during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the same time, the income of 99% of people fell and more than 160 million were pushed into poverty, while about 17 million people died from Covid-19, the report “Inequality Kills” shows.

The document warns that the coronavirus pandemic has become more deadly, more prolonged and more damaging to livelihoods because of inequality. “Income inequality is a more assertive indicator of whether you will die from Covid-19 than age,” the text reads.

According to the executive director of Oxfam Brazil, Katia Maia, if the ten richest men in the world lost 99.99% of their wealth overnight, they would remain richer than 99% of all people. “They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion.”

Oxfam also highlights what it has dubbed the “billion dollar variant” of the coronavirus, taking as an example the trip into space made by the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, in July 2021, as millions of people died from lack of food or vaccines.

Furthermore, if the ten richest men spent $1 million each a day, it would take 414 years to spend their combined fortunes.

Brazil has gained ten new billionaires since March 2020, when the pandemic officially arrived in the country. Currently, there are 55 billionaires, who accumulate a total wealth of US$ 176 billion (R$ 974 billion).

According to Oxfam, the increase in the wealth of Brazilian billionaires was 30% (US$ 39.6 billion, or R$ 219.2 billion), while 90% of the population had a reduction of 0.2% between 2019 and 2021. In this scenario, the 20 biggest billionaires in the country have more wealth (US$ 121 billion or R$ 669.7 billion) than 128 million Brazilians, or 60% of the population.

“Growing economic, gender and racial inequalities, as well as inequalities that exist between countries, are destroying our world. This is not by chance, but by choice,” the report says.

The organization also points out that the wealth of billionaires grew more during the pandemic than in the last 14 years.

“Enormous amounts of public money pumped into our economies dramatically inflated stock prices, which in turn swelled billionaires’ bank accounts more than ever before,” says Oxfam. The organization also defends that there is no lack of resources to reduce inequality, only courage and imagination to deal with the problem.

“All governments should immediately tax the gains made by the super-rich during this pandemic period in order to recover these resources and use them to help the world.”

“A single 99% tax on the sudden increase in Covid-19 profits for the top 10 richest men would generate $812 billion [R$ 4,5 trilhões]”, he tells Oxfam.

The calculations are based on Forbes Magazine’s 2021 Billionaires List. Data on the wealth share comes from the Global Wealth Databook 2021 by the Credit Suisse Research Institute. The data on the earnings of the 99% of the global population are from the World Bank.