Rich get richer, poor poorer

LONDON: The wealth of billionaires including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla founder Elon Musk has soared during the Covid19 pandemic, while the world’s poor face years of hardship, charity Oxfam said yesterday as it demanded steps to tackle inequality.

Nations have a ‘‘shrinking window of opportunity’’ to build a fair, green recovery, according to ‘‘The Inequality Virus’’ report.

‘‘We stand to witness the greatest rise in inequality since records began,’’ Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement as the charity called for higher wealth taxes and stronger protections for workers.

Covid19 has unleashed an economic storm that hit the poor and vulnerable hardest, the World Bank warning more than 100 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty.

It could take more than a decade to reduce the number of people living in poverty back to precrisis levels, Oxfam said.

Meanwhile, the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires rose $US3.9 trillion ($NZ5.4 trillion) between March and December 2020, to reach $US11.95 trillion, the report calculated.

The 10 richest men — a list led by Bezos and Musk and which also includes LVMH luxury group’s CEO Bernard Arnault, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — saw their net worth increase by $US540 billion in the same period, Oxfam said.

That sum would be enough to pay for a vaccine for everyone on Earth, researchers calculated.

A temporary tax on excess profits made by the 32 global corporations that have profited the most during the pandemic could have raised $US104 billion in 2020, Oxfam said. — Reuters