Despite their ballooning wealth, the corporate rich are using their power to demand more tax breaks听and protect their industrial-scale tax dodging. Peter Boyle reports.
Oxfam
Oxfam's annual report on global inequality is a damning indictment of the听chronically inequitable capitalist system, argues Peter Boyle.
Hunger has doubled in the world's 10 worst climate hotspots, worsened by profiteering on cereal markets by huge agriculture corporations. Peter Boyle reports.
Since the pandemic began听a new billionaire has been created every 26 hours, according to听Oxfam. Jessie de Waal reports.
听
Consumption by the world鈥檚 richest is generating the lion's share of global greenhouse gas emissions, a new report states. Peter Boyle argues that the future is literally toast if profit-driven corporations and the world鈥檚 rich remain in power.
As some of the rich and powerful gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum last month, Oxfam International issued a听听revealing that the combined fortunes of the world鈥檚 billionaires rose by 12% last year as the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth decline by 11%.
Australia鈥檚 super-rich keep getting richer.
A new has found that the top 1% of the country鈥檚 plutocrats now own more wealth than the bottom 70%.
There has also been a record rise in the number of billionaires 鈥 from 33 to 43 鈥 with their combined wealth now at almost $160 billion last year.
A , released on the eve of the World Economic Forum, revealed that Australia鈥檚 richest 1% owned 23% of the country鈥檚 total wealth last year, up from 22% the year before, and more than the bottom 70% combined.
Based on data from Credit Suisse, the report also revealed that Australia now has 33 billionaires, up by 8 in the past year alone.
The Oxfam report shows that inequality is worsening.
The Occupy movement, which started as a protest against Wall Street, but ballooned across the US and internationally in 2011, adopted the slogan 鈥淲e are the 99%鈥 to symbolise the struggle for a better world against the greed of 鈥渢he 1%鈥. Some people at the time thought it was an exaggeration to talk about the 1% versus the 99%, but according to Oxfam, since 2015, that richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet combined.
There can be no doubt about it. Capitalism is eating the future, destroying it with systematic greed and exploitation.
Just one year ago, according to calculations by anti-poverty group Oxfam, the 62 richest people on the planet owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population (3.5 billion). This year that number has dropped to eight as inequality spirals out of control.
Eight super rich men have more wealth than half the people in the world and the richest 1% have more than the other 99%. Does anyone believe this is sustainable, let alone conscionable?
The latest World Bank Global Monitoring Report boasted that only 9.6% of the world's population 鈥 702 million people 鈥 are forecast to be living in extreme poverty in 2015, 200 million fewer than in 2012. And this even with the WB now raising its official poverty line from the 2008 US$1.25 a day level to US$1.90.
WB president Jim Yong Kim declared that the world has a good chance of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
The abrupt arrival of this year's bush fire season should be taken as another warning of the urgency of tackling the climate change crisis.
The El Nino phenomenon of severe droughts and flooding rains that will make this a more dangerous summer has been a part of longstanding weather patterns on the Australian continent. But that El Nino will double in frequency and severity as global warming increases.
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