ЦЕНЗОРА.NET

As the annual World Economic Forum gets underway this week in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam says extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years. The charity is calling for fairer taxation amid soaring global inequality, as Henry Ridgwell reports. Videographer: Henry Ridgwell
…

As the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gets underway this week at the Swiss ski resort of Davos; the charity Oxfam says extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years – and is calling for fairer taxation in response to the soaring inequality. 

Hundreds of billionaires, dozens of government ministers and central bank governors are due to attend the WEF, widely seen as a get together for the global super rich. In its report, “Survival of the Richest,” published Monday, Oxfam says the world’s billionaires are becoming richer.

“Davos is back in January. The festival of wealth is back. And we’re bringing alarming new findings which show that the one percent, the richest one percent in the world have grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020,” Oxfam America’s director of economic justice, Nabil Ahmed, told VOA. 

The charity says that gain in wealth equates to $42 trillion, nearly twice as much as the bottom 99% of the world’s population earns. 

Pandemic profits 

Oxfam says the source of that wealth is partly government money: emergency liquidity pumped into the global economy as the coronavirus pandemic forced countries into lockdown in 2020. 

“That was essential. But at the same time the ultra-wealthy were able to really ride this asset boom that resulted, the stock market boom that resulted. And without the guardrails of progressive taxation in the economy, the ultra-wealthy were really able to line their pockets,” Ahmed said.

Inflation 

Oxfam calculates that at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, meaning people are becoming poorer. The wealth of billionaires, however, has surged as inflation drives up food and energy prices. 

“The current cost-of-living crisis, with spiraling food and energy prices, is also creating dramatic gains for many at the top. Food and energy corporations are seeing record profits and making record pay-outs to their rich shareholders and billionaire owners. Corporate price profiteering is driving at least 50% of inflation in Australia, the U.S. and Europe, in what is as much a ‘cost-of-profit’ crisis as a cost-of-living one,” the Oxfam report says.

“We were able to show how 95 food and energy corporations have actually been able to double their profits in 2022,” the charity’s Ahmed told VOA.

Fair taxes 

Oxfam is calling for windfall taxes imposed on energy companies to be extended to food companies making big profits. It also wants a tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires.  

“The spectacular rise of wealth and income at the very top has coincided with a collapse in taxes on the richest 1%. While there are differences between countries, the general trend towards lower taxes for the rich has been remarkably similar across all regions of the world,” the report says.

“Extreme inequality is not inevitable,” Ahmed told VOA. “This isn’t about nurses, teachers, the middle class. This is really about those at the very top, ensuring that they’re paying far fairer taxes.”

Solutions 

The president of the WEF maintained that the annual Davos summit does benefit the whole world. 

“So much is at stake, we really need to find solutions on the wars and conflicts. We also have to secure that we don’t go into a recession, and we have 10 years of low growth, as we had in the 1970s. That is at stake, and we need all the stakeholders to be part of working towards a safer and more inclusive growing global economy,” World Economic Forum President Borge Brende told The Associated Press.

Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press.
…

Big oil firms came under pressure at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) from activists who accused them of hijacking the climate debate, while a Greta Thunberg-sponsored “cease and desist” campaign gained support on social media.

Major energy firms including BP BP.L, Chevron CVX.N and Saudi Aramco 2222.SE are among the 1,500 business leaders gathering for the annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos, where global threats including climate change are on the agenda.

“We are demanding concrete and real climate action,” said Nicolas Siegrist, the 26-year-old organiser of the protest who also heads the Young Socialists party in Switzerland.

The annual meeting of global business and political leaders opens in Davos on Monday.

“They will be in the same room with state leaders and they will push for their interests,” Siegrist said of the involvement of energy companies during a demonstration attended by several hundred people on Sunday.

The oil and gas industry has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the world’s energy mix as countries shift to low carbon economies.

On Monday, a social media campaign added to the pressure on oil and gas companies, by promoting a “cease and desist” notice sponsored by climate activists Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, through the non-profit website Avaaz.

It demands energy company CEOs “immediately stop opening any new oil, gas, or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need,” and threatens legal action and more protests if they fail to comply.

The campaign, which had been signed by more than 660,000 people, had almost 200,000 shares on Monday morning.

Sumant Sinha, who heads one of India’s largest renewable energy firms, said it would be good to include big oil companies in the transition debate as they have a vital role to play.

“If oil people are part of these conversations to the extent that they are also committing to change then by all means. It is better to get them inside the tent than to have them outside the tent,” Sinha, chairman and CEO of ReNew Power, told Reuters, saying that inclusion should not lead to “sabotage.”

Rising interest rates have made it harder for renewable energy developments to attract financing, giving traditional players with deep pockets a competitive advantage.

As delegates began to arrive in Davos, Debt for Climate activists protested at a private airport in eastern Switzerland, which they said would be used by some WEF attendees, and issued a statement calling for foreign debts of poorer countries to be cancelled in order to accelerate the global energy transition.
…

The outlook for the year ahead and beyond is not very promising. The International Labor Organization warns that the current global economic slowdown will force millions of workers to accept lower quality, poorly paid jobs.  

In its “World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2023” report, the ILO predicts global unemployment will rise by 3 million for a total of 208 million this year with similar projections for 2024. 

ILO director of work quality, Manuela Tomei, said both the quantity and quality of jobs will deteriorate, and that working conditions are expected to worsen while wages go down. 

“Workers in low- and middle-income countries are expected to be hardest hit,” Tomei explained. “And with the pandemic and the economic slowdown across the globe, the prospects of seeing a reduction in informality and poverty have and will deteriorate further.”  

The report warns the cost-of-living crisis will push more people into poverty, widening the gap between rich and poor. It also notes that about 2 billion people, mainly in developing countries, work in the informal economy.  

According to the report, the slowing global economy is likely to reverse the progress which has been made since 2004 in moving people out of the informal sector.  

In addition to the millions of reported unemployed, the ILO says 473 million people last year stopped actively searching for work. It explains they either were discouraged about prospects of finding a job or had other obligations such as care responsibilities. 

For the first time since the 1970s, Tomei said stagflation conditions— that is high inflation and low growth combined — are threatening productivity and labor market recovery. 

She added that, “The Ukrainian war, geopolitical tensions, disruption in supply chains, high inflation, the tightening of monetary policies, and great uncertainty overall are all contributing to depressing the prospects for labor markets.”   

The ILO reports young people aged 15 to 24 are facing severe difficulties in finding employment, and that they are three times more likely to be out of a job than adults. It adds young women are faring much worse than young men, and that only 47.4 percent of women participated in the global labor force last year compared with 72.3 percent for men. 
…