Report: Billionaires Made Enough in 2017 to End Poverty Seven Times Over
SEATTLE – Last year, billionaires saw their wealth increase enough to end extreme poverty around the world seven times over, according to a report from the global charity organization Oxfam.
The report, “Reward Work, Not Wealth,” says 82 percent of the wealth created in 2017 went to the top 1 percent, and that a new billionaire was created every two days.
Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s vice president for policy and advocacy, says this growing inequality isn’t good news for workers.
“It’s not a good time to be a worker on the wrong end of the economic chain,” he states. “What we essentially have are market economies where the markets aren’t being regulated and the rules are essentially being rigged by those who can afford to do so, and that’s where you see extreme wealth emerging and people getting stuck.”
Some criticize the report, saying it buries the good news that the bottom 50 percent of income earners around the world actually are doing better than previously thought.
The report focuses on the inequality women face in the workplace. It says women provided an estimated $10 trillion in unpaid work caring for someone else in 2017.
Washington state is no stranger to billionaires. The two richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, live in the Evergreen State, as well as eight other billionaires.
O’Brien actually praises Bezos’ investment in journalism through his ownership of The Washington Post and Gates’ charity work around the world.
But O’Brien says the wealthy also have enough power to hurt the rest of society when they don’t share their prosperity.
“If human dignity is dependent on everybody having enough power and rights to be able to lift themselves out of poverty – to live with dignity – should any individual have that much power?” he stresses.
The Oxfam report has also been chided as overly critical of capitalism and free markets.
O’Brien says it’s the opposite – that the organization actually wants to see markets work for everyone.
“How do we actually create incentives for companies to grow, markets to work, without creating these extreme realities for people on both ends of the equation?” he raises.
O’Brien says governments should incentivize business structures that are more beneficial to workers, such as cooperatives, and find a way to compensate people who work in the care economy.
