Wealth gap: 1% get 82% of the new money

– Four out of every five US dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest 1%, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found yesterday.

As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the superrich and neglects the poor.

It found that the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017, while 82% of the wealth generated last year went to the richest 1% of the global population.

“It reveals how our economies are rewarding wealth rather than the hard work of millions of people,” Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam’s executive director, said.

“The few at the top get richer and richer and the millions at the bottom are trapped in poverty wages.”

Byanyima blamed “tax dodging” as a major cause of global inequality and urged leaders to clamp down on tax havens and plough money into education, healthcare and jobs for young people.

In particular, Byanyima criticised US President Donald Trump, who is attending the World Economic Forum, for creating “a Cabinet of billionaires” and implementing tax legislation that, she said, rewarded the superrich, not ordinary Americans.

The annual report found that the number of billionaires rose at a rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017, while in the United States, the three richest people owned the same wealth as the poorest half of the population.

Oxfam said women workers were worst hit by global inequality as they consistently earned less than men and usually have lower-paid and more insecure forms of work.

The World Economic Forum has previously estimated that it would take 217 years before women earn as much as men and have equal representation in the workplace.

According to the 2017 Forbes rich list, the five richest people on the planet are all men – from Microsoft’s Bill Gates, to veteran investor Warren Buffett, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Inditex founder Amancio Ortega and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. –