New estimates show that just eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world. To be precise, these men have as much wealth as 3.6 billion people, shows Oxfam study.
“None of them has earned this fortune through talent or hard work, but by inheritance or accumulation through industries which are prone to corruption and cronyism,” says the report.
In fact, over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India.
The report claims that the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet since 2015.
Such a rising inequality of income is even more prevalent in developing national like Vietnam where the country’s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in 10 years.
Similarly, in India too, the richest 1% hold a huge 58% of the country's total wealth. This is much higher than the global average of about 50%.
Surprisingly, 57 billionaires have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 70% of India. In fact, the number of billionaires increased from 2 in the 1990s to 65 in 2014. Net worth of these billionaires is enough to eliminate absolute poverty in the country, twice over.
This rising inequality in income is evident from the fact that the CEO of India’s top IT firm earns 416 times the salary of a typical employee in his company.
The report has suggested that the Indian government should introduce an inheritance tax and raise the wealth tax. The report further recommended that the government should not eliminate tax exemptions for corporates and instead it should end the era of tax havens.
