Taxing The Rich Is The Solution To The Current Global Crisis: OXFAM

In a report entitled “Survival of the Richest,” the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (OXFAM) denounced on Monday that one percent of the well-off world population grabbed nearly two-thirds of the wealth created since 2020.

RELATED: 

New UN Humanitarian Overview Gives Gloomy Outlook for 2023

“While ordinary people make 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 Director Gabriela Bucher stated.

The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations nearly tripled their profits in 2022 when they made US$306 billion in windfall profits and paid out 84 percent of that figure to wealthy shareholders.

“The Walton dynasty, the owner of half of Walmart, received US$8.5 billion over the last year. The wealth of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, also grew by 46 percent,” the Oxfam report reads, stressing that excess corporate profits prompted at least half of inflation in Australia, the U.S., and the U.K.

“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the solution to the current crises. It is 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, but just the superyachts,” Bucher highlighted.

On Tuesday, French lawmaker Jean-Luc Melenchon proposed an increase of 2 percent in the taxes of 42 French billionaires to solve the current pension system’s crisis, which the government intended to resolve by extending the statutory retirement age.

“According to OXFAM, the top 10 French billionaires earned the equivalent of two years of gas, electricity, and fuel bills in France. It seems fair to us that this part of the population be the one that contributes to achieving a greater balance in society,” Melenchon stated.