Billionaires blast into space as billions suffer

LONDON. – Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin, just had his “best day ever” on Tuesday after traveling 60 miles above Earth’s surface in a spaceship designed by his company Blue Origin, according to the Guardian.

For roughly four minutes of weightlessness in suborbital space, the richest man alive spent around US$ 5,5 billion. Bezos is worth approximately US$205 billion, so paying for an exclusive space flight didn’t really affect his day- to- day budgeting.

But outside the luxurious world of billionaires with their private jets, mansions, and super yachts, that kind of money would have extraordinary impacts. It could save millions of people from starvation, help to vaccinate the world against Covid- 19, and deliver urgent aid to humanitarian crises.

In response to Bezos’ space flight schedon Tuesday, Deepak Xavier, Oxfam International’s Global Head of Inequality Campaign, said:

“We’ve now reached stratospheric inequality. Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. Eleven people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement.

“The ultra-rich are being propped up by unfair tax systems and pitiful labour protections. US billionaires got around US$1,8 trillion richer since the beginning of the pandemic and nine new billionaires were created by Big Pharma’s monopoly on the Covid- 19 vaccines. Bezos pays next to no US income tax but can spend US$7,5 billion on his own aerospace adventure. Bezos’ fortune has almost doubled during the Covid- 19 pandemic. He could afford to pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against Covid- 19 and still be richer than he was when the pandemic began.

“Billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes for our hospitals, schools, roads and social care, too. Governments must adopt a much stronger global minimum tax on multinational corporations and look at new revenues. A wealth tax, for example of just 3 percent, would generate US$6 billion a year from Bezos’ US$200 billion fortune alone - a sixth of what the US spends on foreign aid. A Covid- 19 profits tax on Amazon would yield US$11 billion, enough to vaccinate nearly 600 million people.

“What we need is a fair tax system that allows more investment into ending hunger and poverty, into education and healthcare, and into saving the planet from the growing climate crisis – rather than leaving it.”