• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Oxfam Study: Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years

Sabin

Sabin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,605
Published: 16th January 2023 at oxfam.org
​
Super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in past decade.


Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.


A tax of up to 5 percent on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.​
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
​
Billionaires have seen extraordinary increases in their wealth. During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while $16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together. A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent. Billionaire fortunes have increased by $2.7 billion a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains —the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out $257 billion (84 percent) of that to rich shareholders. The Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, received $8.5 billion over the last year. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, has seen this wealth soar by $42 billion (46 percent) in 2022 alone. Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US and the UK.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people —roughly one in ten people on Earth— are going hungry. Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 percent of the world's hungry population. The World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2. Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare. Three-quarters of the world's governments are planning austerity-driven public sector spending cuts —including on healthcare and education— by $7.8 trillion over the next five years.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Rest of the study can be found >here<

It's this time of the year again where everyone gets the reminder that our current system is broken as fuck and needs to be teared down around the world asap.

This shit can't continue forever and has to be stopped.
 
Last edited:
Lotus

Lotus

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
105,640
super-famicom said:
When can we eat them
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

giphy.webp
 
Joshua

Joshua

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,709
They are so greedy I've gone from "Yes we should raise taxes but wealth redistribution would be going too far" to "We need to take it all".
 
Nepenthe

Nepenthe

When the music hits, you feel no pain.
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
20,674
Joshua said:
They are so greedy I've gone from "Yes we should raise taxes but wealth redistribution would be going too far" to "We need to take it all".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The economic value largely belongs to the workers, so as far as I'm concerned, taking it all is just righting a basic wrong.
 
gozu

gozu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,312
America
Why can't the 1% be happy and content with what they have without stealing more? I'm not in the 1% and I still am happy and content with what I have. I don't need a mansion. I don't need a 100k car. I don't need to eat at michelin star restaurants every day (or every month, or every year). Hell, plenty of cheap eateries have better food than michelin starred restaurants.

I don't get why some people are so insatiably hungry for money. Like what? Life is not worth living without absolutely every single luxury every day? Seriously? You'll just get used to it after like 3 months and then will derive 0 additional pleasure from your riches. And you get to wonder if your friends are just friends of your money. That's fucking horrible. I need to trust my friends entirely. And I need to know my SO didn't get with me for money. Am I really a crazy delusional weirdo for thinking those things?
 
9-Volt

9-Volt

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,868
Capitalism needs to have a healthy cycle flow of money to function. Money needs to be invested all the time. When you hoard the cash, there's only one place it can go: The heirs.

This ain't capitalism, this is cold hard feudalism. This 1% - 99% separation is nothing but noble - serf divide. Hell, it's even worse than feudalism. At least people could afford proper housing back then.
 
ezekial45

ezekial45

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,742
I really feel like this is all going to come to a head at some point, probably sooner than we think. Whether that's full on class consciousness and revolt or just a full blown collapse of everything, something has got to give. This is just so absurd, and the rich are totally breaking the floor beneath with all this wealth they've amassed.
 
Last edited:
ZeroMaverick

ZeroMaverick

Member
Mar 5, 2018
4,432
Sometimes, I wish hell was real. Even though I would go there these people would also go and likely suffer way more than I would. Maybe I shouldn't hope that kind of thing. It's just so frustrating being this powerless.
 
Digital Dinosaur

Digital Dinosaur

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,028
Rita Repulsa's Moon Palace
gozu said:
Why can't the 1% be happy and content with what they have without stealing more? I'm not in the 1% and I still am happy and content with what I have. I don't need a mansion. I don't need a 100k car. I don't need to eat at michelin star restaurants every day (or every month, or every year). Hell, plenty of cheap eateries have better food than michelin starred restaurants.

I don't get why some people are so insatiably hungry for money. Like what? Life is not worth living without absolutely every single luxury every day? Seriously? You'll just get used to it after like 3 months and then will derive 0 additional pleasure from your riches. And you get to wonder if your friends are just friends of your money. That's fucking horrible. I need to trust my friends entirely. And I need to know my SO didn't get with me for money. Am I really a crazy delusional weirdo for thinking those things?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The genuinely, massively wealthy (multi-billionaires whose value is stable) live in a tier of culture that makes them the new divine kings. They see their position as merely the way the world works - there are nobles and peasants. Their luxury is taken for granted, and in a sense, they actually don't worry if the fellow nobility are really their friends or not - they have so much power it is invisible to them.

The people who tend to live miserable lives, never knowing who is real or fake, purposefully engaging in displays of wealth and lavish living to prove to themselves and others they are rich - these are the Musks. They are desperately trying to become enshrined in the ranks of nobility and do waste their lives with the ceaseless all-consuming greed and desire. The problem is that a vicious, inhumane capitalistic society creates anxiety in everyone, even the wealthy. If you're worth ten million dollars you are still pushed to acquire more and more to insure you "can make it" and never fail.

People whose minds are rotted by the fundamental carrier wave of capitalism do become unable to live at any comfortable level. They simply need more and more because the point of existing is to "have it all".
 
Lowrys

Lowrys

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,335
London
Capitalism is an insatiable monster that will consume everything in its path, including our planet.

The only question is whether science and tech will move fast enough to find the 1% a new planet to wreck before this one becomes uninhabitable.

My money is on "no."
 
captive

captive

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,990
Houston
User Banned (2 Weeks): Cross Thread Drama; Metacommentary; Antagonizing Other Users and Long History of Similar Behaviour
Wonder where all the 100k a year is rich people at now. They never seem to show up in threads like this.
 
Nepenthe

Nepenthe

When the music hits, you feel no pain.
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
20,674
9-Volt said:
This ain't capitalism, this is cold hard feudalism.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It has essentially always been fuedalism. The lie that it wasn't predicated on ensuring the continuation of an unjustified hierarchy where lucky assholes lord over everyone else, that it is truly meritocratic and anyone can become the king, is just that- a lie.
 
Chaos-Theory

Chaos-Theory

Member
Dec 6, 2018
2,401
User Banned (3 Days): Antagonizing another user over multiple posts
captive said:
Wonder where all the 100k a year is rich people at now. They never seem to show up in threads like this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You must have taken that personally because those posters are living rent free in your head.

How many times are you going to bring this up in similar threads?
 

Dis

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,935
This is why the whole argument that retirement ages in France has to go up for the pension system to cope with raising life expectancy was called out for being bullshit in the other thread. The system can cope just fine, isn't going to be destroyed at all and the easiest way they could solve the issues they have with it would be to actually tax the rich and corporations to pay for the extra cost, instead they decided the working class should shoulder the burden of the extra tax (both by body and by financial) to pay for it.

At this point the world is fucked, the mega rich know it, everyone can see it but they'll do whatever they can, be it propaganda or using their wealth to shield themselves by force, to hoard as much wealth as they can in the mean time so they can have the end of their days in opulence and privilege while the rest of us beg for scraps. Drastic changes need to happen and I just hope I'm alive to see it in my life time, if not for a course correction to hopefully fix things then just to at least enjoy the tears of the mega rich as their ill-gotten gains are taken from them.
 
Chaos-Theory

Chaos-Theory

Member
Dec 6, 2018
2,401
captive said:
I like mocking people with stupid takes? Sue me

Also you like stalking my posts or something? I couldn't even tell you what other thread(s) I said it in.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I just remember years ago you saying something similar, but someone dug up a post of yours of how you spent $20k on an outdoor kitchen and you never came back to the thread.

Sue me for having a good memory.
 
SilentStorm

SilentStorm

Member
Apr 14, 2019
1,913
Is this just a high score or a Guiness Record thing?

They have so much money they could spend it on luxury every day and have no issue, yet refuse to donate the money or really spend a lot of it, they just keep the money, what, do they want to go down in history as the richest guy ever or say they have a bigger number than others?

There is absolutely no other reason to just want so much money they aren't spending.
 
Milky Way

Milky Way

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,050
They're destroying the planet we all live on and our taking away all of our futures. When do we do something?
 
bangai-o

bangai-o

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,527
It would be nice if Republican voters would hold GOP toes to the fire concerning this during each election cycle.
 
OP
OP
Sabin

Sabin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,605
QuigleyMcShine said:
Amazing, the thread is already forgetting what it's about and is turning on the upper middle class instead.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That has always been the problem for movements to tax the rich or worker movements in general.

middle class against upper middle class
poor against the middle class
middle class against the poor
etc etc etc

We should be focusing on the really wealthy folks (spoiler for some: Its not worker who make 100k a year).
But no, we are getting on each others throats instead of fighting the real problem. The ultra rich don't even have to do anything since we are busy doing dumb infighting.
 

Deleted member 8257

Oct 26, 2017
24,586
9-Volt said:
Capitalism needs to have a healthy cycle flow of money to function. Money needs to be invested all the time. When you hoard the cash, there's only one place it can go: The heirs.

This ain't capitalism, this is cold hard feudalism. This 1% - 99% separation is nothing but noble - serf divide. Hell, it's even worse than feudalism. At least people could afford proper housing back then.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Investing in capital simply inflates the pockets of shareholders. And I think this is just Capitalism at its peak.
 

Adventureracing

The Fallen
Nov 7, 2017
8,027
We need to massively increase taxes on the mega rich and cut down on tax evasion. Problem is trying to convince the masses because the wealthy have successful managed to demonise the word 'tax' and it's near impossible to push for increasing taxes even if it benefits everyone but the 1%.
 
Sidebuster

Sidebuster

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,405
California
San said:
When do we as a society stop pretending everything is ok?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Probably when the first couple mega billionaires get got and the rest realize there are a billion angry people ready to do them in if they don't give up some power and wealth. I really doubt they'll do anything until it's real for them. Some will probably run to their hide-y holes and realize that's not sustainable either.
 
ForBeers

ForBeers

Member
Oct 27, 2017
516
Sabin said:
That has always been the problem for movements to tax the rich or worker movements in general.

middle class against upper middle class
poor against the middle class
middle class against the poor
etc etc etc

We should be focusing on the really wealthy folks (spoiler for some: Its not worker who make 100k a year).
But no, we are getting on each others throats instead of fighting the real problem. The ultra rich don't even have to do anything since we are busy doing dumb infighting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yep. Billionaires understand class solidarity.
 
Muppet of a Man

Muppet of a Man

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,670
Nepenthe said:
The economic value largely belongs to the workers, so as far as I'm concerned, taking it all is just righting a basic wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This. These fuckers can't see (or pretend to not see) history repeating itself. And it's approaching French Revolution o'clock any minute now.

This guy is the only one of them to ever acknowledge it publicly:


View: https://youtu.be/q2gO4DKVpa8

"If things keep going this way, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neofeudalist rentier society like 18th century France."

Dude is spot fucking on.

This guy's speech is seriously probably one of the best I've ever heard on addressing the raging inequality of the modern world. It's certainly worth the watch through to the end. He basically stated that we are in dire need of a new New Deal back in 2014 with all the progressive social democratic economic and social policies that entails. He is also pretty much the originator of the $15.00 federal minimum wage idea.
 
Last edited:
Excuse me

Excuse me

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,016
It's not easy to be a billionare, just look at Elon Musk who had to take yet an another CEO position in order to make ends meet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.