Oxfam Study Highlights Global Inequality Crisis

A recent news item revealed a fact that strikes me as a moral obscenity.  That was the Oxfam report Working for the Few: Political Capture and Income Inequality that found the richest 85 people in the world own as much as the poorest three and a half billion.  That's 85 individuals whose resources equal those of half of humanity.  If you broaden things a bit, the top 1% own 65 times as much as the bottom half, those same three and a half billion.  In the United States, 95% of the post-crash growth after 2009 has gone to the top 1%, while 90 percent of the population has gotten poorer.  Income inequality has grown faster--much faster--in the United States than any of the other countries.  But it is not alone in the general trend.  From 1980 to 2012, the richest one percent has increased its share of the wealth in 26 of 28 countries for which complete statistics are available. 

By going to the link above you can learn the whole story in 32 pages.  Or you can open the summary version and get the full outline in 6 pages.  I highly recommend it; it's a real eye-opener.  Oxfam has been fighting world hunger and poverty since it was formed as the Oxford Famine Relief Committee during World War II in 1942.  It's now a world wide non-governmental organization.

The subtitle encapsulates a prime finding of the study.  It raises the warning that by virtue of their wealth and influence over political systems around the world, this tiny minority could very well lock in a perpetual dynamic of increasing wealth for those at the top and increasing want for all or most below.

To avert this, it calls on governments and the wealthiest to support open and progressive taxation of wealth and income and for governments to ensure education, health care and social protection for their people.  The report asks the wealthy to commit to having their companies pay a living wage, to not bending political processes to their narrow selfish ends, to not evading taxes, and to challenging other wealthy people to do the same.

The idea that we are a species that allows 85 single individuals to engorge themselves on as much as half the global population while a couple of billion live in abject poverty is morally indefensible, and  frankly, sickening.  One percent is worth $110 trillion.  Fifty percent is worth $2 trillion.  Even a modestly augmented amount of redistribution through services and a decent wage would provide plenty to eliminate desperate want on a global scale while still affording a luxurious lifestyle to the affluent.  It's time to begin making that a reality.