Networth of richest 1% double of rest of world: Oxfam
Davos (PTI): The richest 1 per cent have bagged nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world population put together over the past two years, a new report said on Monday.
In its annual inequality report released on the first day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting here, rights group Oxfam further said that billionaire fortunes are increasing by USD 2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.
Releasing the report on the sidelines of the annual congregation of the global elite in this Swiss ski resort town, Oxfam said a tax of up to 5 per cent on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise USD 1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift two billion people out of poverty.
The report, titled 'Survival of the Richest', further said the richest one per cent have grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth USD 42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 per cent of the world's population.
During the past decade, the richest 1 per cent had captured around half of all new wealth, it added, while noting that extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years.
"While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires," Oxfam International Director Gabriela Bucher said.
"Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today's overlapping crises. It's time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow 'trickling down' to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn't lift all ships just the superyachts," she added.
During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, USD 26 trillion (63 per cent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 per cent, while USD 16 trillion (37 per cent) went to the rest of the world put together, according to the Oxfam study.
A billionaire gained roughly USD 1.7 million for every USD 1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 per cent, it added.
Billionaire fortunes have increased by USD 2.7 billion a day, which comes on top of a decade of historic gains -- the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years, Oxfam said.
It said that the calculations are based on the most up-to-date and comprehensive data sources available, while figures on the richest people have come from the Forbes billionaire list.
It alleged that billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits, as 95 food and energy corporations more than doubled their profits last year.
"They made USD 306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out USD 257 billion (84 per cent) of that to rich shareholders," it added.
It cited examples of the Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, receiving USD 8.5 billion over the last year and Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, seeing his wealth soar by USD 42 billion (46 per cent) in 2022 alone.
Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US, and the UK, the report said.
"Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 per cent of the world's hungry population. The World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2," Oxfam said.
Oxfam called for a systemic and wide-ranging increase in taxation of the super-rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering.
"Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fuelled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires," it added.
Oxfam claimed that Elon Musk, one of the world's richest men, paid a "true tax rate" of about 3 per cent between 2014 and 2018, while Aber Christine, a flour vendor in Uganda, makes USD 80 a month and pays a tax rate of 40 per cent.
Worldwide, only four cents in every tax dollar now comes from taxes on wealth, while half of the world's billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants, according to Oxfam.
Noting that the taxes on the wealthiest used to be much higher earlier, Oxfam said that over the last forty years, governments across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas have slashed the income tax rates on the richest.
At the same time, they have upped taxes on goods and services, which fall disproportionately on the poorest people and exacerbate gender inequality, it added.
"Taxing the super-rich is the strategic precondition to reducing inequality and resuscitating democracy. We need to do this for innovation. For stronger public services. For happier and healthier societies. And to tackle the climate crisis, by investing in the solutions that counter the insane emissions of the very richest," Bucher said.
According to a new analysis by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and the Patriotic Millionaires, an annual wealth tax of up to 5 per cent on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise USD 1.7 trillion a year.
It would be enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, Oxfam said.
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Mizoram class 12 results out, pass percentage at 87.67
Aizawl (PTI): Mizoram recorded a pass percentage of 87.67 in the class 12 board examinations on Wednesday, with boys scoring marginally higher than girls,
Across the Arts, Science, and Commerce streams, boys secured an 87.7 per cent success rate, while girls followed closely at 87.66 per cent, according to the results published by the Mizoram Board of School Education (MBSE).
Of the 12,243 students who sat for the examinations held between February and March, 10,734 passed, 1,394 could not, and 115 qualified for compartmental examinations.
Academic performance was strongest in the Commerce stream, which saw a 90.51 per cent success rate among 759 candidates.
The Science stream followed with 89.24 per cent pass rate out of 2,770 students who appeared for the exam, while the Arts stream, with 87,14 students, recorded a pass percentage of 86.93.
In terms of institutional performance, the results revealed that deficit schools, which receive regular government grants, maintained their status as top performers with an average 93.80 per cent pass rate across all streams, followed by private schools at 91.55 per cent, while state-run schools recorded a success rate 83.13 per cent.
