Last year witnessed a record increase in the number of billionaires around the world – one more every two days – as the wealth of the billionaires rose by $762 billion over the period, according to a latest Oxfam report just released.
Eighty two percent (82%) of the entire growth in global wealth went to the richest 1% while no increase in the wealth of bottom 50% of the global population – 3.8 billion – was witnessed for the year. The increase is enough to end extreme poverty worldwide by seven times over.
There are 2,043 billionaires worldwide which are only 0.000027% of the global population whose net worth is estimated at over $7.6 trillion – more than 40% of the world’s largest US gross domestic product and nearly 10% of the world’s total GDP.
The charity organization also noted that the incomes of the ordinary workers increased by an average of 2% a year against about 13% a year or almost six-times faster growth in the wealth of the elite group.
Inheritance is the main and the easiest source of deriving wealth. Approximately one-third of billionaires draw wealth from inheritance.
Over the next 20 years, more than $2.4 trillion will be inherited by 500 richest people of the world to their heirs. This sum exceeds the GDP of world’s second most-populated country, India, with population of 1.3 billion people.
Another highlight of the Oxfam’s report is that one of the CEO from top five international fashion brands earns in just four days what a Bangladeshi garment worker would earn in her lifetime.
The non-governmental organization further states that super-rich individuals and corporations are masking as much as $7.6 trillion in tax havens from tax authorities as revealed in Panama and Paradise Papers – evading $200 billion of taxes every year.
Attributable to the tax havens – the richest 1% are evading $200 billion of taxes every year including $170 billion of lost tax revenues for developing companies from such super-rich billionaires and corporations.
Oxfam also estimates that a global tax of 1.5% on the wealth of the billionaires could pay for every child to go to the school.
What Wonders This Money Can Do!
United Nations estimates that $30.0 billion a year is required to eradicate hunger from the world so the total money held by merely 2,043 should be enough to provide food to 870-million under-nourished people for 256-years.
More than 3-billion people around the world live on less than $2.5 a day of which over 1.3 billion people live in extreme poverty; less than $1.25 a day. What tiny 0.000027% control, can double the earnings of more than 3-billion people living below the poverty line worldwide.
In another estimate by Sachs, $175 billion a year is needed to end extreme poverty throughout the world in 20-years. These 2,043-billionaires can do this alone; still over $4,168 billion will remain at their disposal.
According to Global Partnership for Education, the average cost of educating children from pre-primary through secondary education (13-years) in developing countries is $5,600 so $7.6 trillion can educate up to 1.37 million poor children. Remember there are about 260-million children not in the schools.
The Water Project estimates that 783-million people around the globe do not have access to clean drinking water whilst 1 in 3 people, or 2.4 billion, are living without improved sanitation facilities. 50% of the patients hospitalized are suffering from water-related disease whereas nearly 20% of the children deaths are also correlated with the eat-related diseases.
An assessment in The New York Times in 2000 suggests that brining water and sanitation to entire world would cost $10.0 billion a year. Even if we two-fold the evaluation, billionaires’ money can provide water and sanitation to whole world for a period of more than 383-years.
A panel of top-five economists, including four-Nobel laureates unanimously suggested a few ideas to spend $75 billion (1% of billionaires’ total net worth) to fix the world:
- $3 billion a year to fight against malnutrition to enable 100-million children to start their lives without stunted growth or malnutrition
- Only $300 million can prevent 300,000 children’s deaths from Malaria; investments can also be made for tuberculosis treatment, childhood immunization, and an HIV/AIDS vaccination
- Just $200 million are required to provide low-cost drugs to treat acute heart-attacks in developing countries; preventing 300,000 deaths
- $2 billion can be spent on research and development to increase agriculture output that will not only reduce hunger by increasing food production and lowering food prices but would also protect biodiversity as higher production would ensure less deforestation
It is not all about capitalizing wealth; there are many top-billionaires who make regular charitable donations; called philanthropists. These include Bill and Melinda Gates (Gates Foundation), Warren Buffett, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Walton Family, Eli & Edythe Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Allen and many others.
Sulaiman Al-Rajhi, a Saudi philanthropist and Forbes 120th richest person in world for 2011 with net worth of $7.7 billion, is the lead paradigm of a billionaire who choose to live in rags after growing to billions from rags.
“Now I own only my dresses.”
In 2011, Al-Rajhi transferred all his fortune among his children and set aside the rest for endowments to again become a poor man. The founder of the largest world’s Islamic bank, Al-Rajhi Bank, also spoke of his success in convincing chiefs of leading world’s banks including Bank of England that interest is forbidden in both Islam and Christianity.
Although he did not respond to the distribution of his assets to children and endowments but Press Reader reported transfers to endowments valued at $5.5 billion.