Ahead of the three-day World Economic Forum (WEF) which commences tuesday in Davos, Switzerland, the Oxfam has said that 82 percent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world got nothing or saw no increase in their wealth.
According to the World population review, the total estimate of living humanity stood at 7.6bn as at December 2017 meaning that half of the world populations were affected by poverty.
The Oxfam said in a report titled ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’ shows how the global economy enables wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes while hundreds of millions of people are struggling to survive on poverty line.
“Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010, six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just two percent. The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017.
“It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year. It would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top 5 companies in the garment sector in 2016,” the report said.
The Executive Director of Oxfam International Winnie Byanyima, said: “The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.”
According to her women workers often find themselves off at the bottom of the heap. Across the world, women consistently earn less than men and are usually in the lowest paid and least secure forms of work. By comparison, 9 out of 10 billionaires are men.
“Oxfam has spoken to women across the world whose lives are blighted by inequality. Women in Vietnamese garment factories who work far from home for poverty pay and don’t get to see their children for months at a time. Women working in the US poultry industry who are forced to wear nappies because they are denied toilet breaks. Women working in hotels in Canada and the Dominican Republic who stay silent about sexual harassment for fear of losing their jobs,” she said.
She therefore urged governments to ensure that economies work for everyone and not just the fortunate few by limiting returns to shareholders and top executives, and ensure all workers receive a minimum ‘living’ wage that would enable them to have a decent quality of life among others.
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