As we begin the second month of the New Year, we should pay attention to the growing global inequality that has only been getting worse and the reason behind it. It is evident that due to COVID-19, the whole world is either dealing with its aftermath, while others like Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia were hit the hardest.
The UNDP, the Human Development Index, which measures a nation’s health, education, and standard of living, has declined globally for two years in a row. Human development has fallen back to its 2016 levels, as well as poverty increasing for the first time in 20 years. A study posted by an international humanitarian organization that dedicates to fighting poverty and hunger, Oxfam, published a report revealing that rich people are getting richer, while poverty is increasing.
This study precisely covers inequality among the working class and the 1% richest people in the world. Billionaires like Elon Musk pay almost no taxes, his rate of just 3.2% in recent years, while Jeff Bezos paid less than 1%. Let’s call attention to the key points this study revealed:
- Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth – nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
- Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day, even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.
- Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes, and half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on the money they give to their children.
We are currently living in a global inequality where people in the working class and the lower half work more for what they earn. These people are the ones that engage in manual labor and notably worked all throughout the pandemic lockdown and were deemed “essential workers”. And yet, they are paying more taxes than the richest men in the world. Although wages have gone up, the average hourly earning of US employees was a mere $11. As inflation continues to economically disturb families worldwide, wages are simply not enough to make ends meet for some.
- A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
- “Top rates of tax on income have become lower and less progressive, with the average tax rate on the richest falling from 58% in 1980 to 42% more recently in OECD countries”, Oxfam reported. “Across 100 countries, the average rate is even lower, at 31%”.
I wanted to note that the 1% are responsible for climate change, as they are the ones that are likely to invest in polluting industries like fossil fuels. As governments across the globe are doing little to no help to stop climate change, the fossil fuel industry is a money business that hurts the environment in the process.
As climate change catastrophes circle around the globe, people living in poverty are affected harshly, as they face more difficulty recovering from floods, dry harvests, and water shortages. This is simply a product of the capitalist system, the 1% getting luxurious, expensive tastes of “life” while the 99% worry about not being able to feed their kid for the next day. We must tax the rich, a simple statement that is the solution to change the inequality that so many humans are facing.
We should all have a workplace where we feel safe, heard, and fairly paid for our labor. Countries should take climate change more seriously, as some of the richest politicians are behind the contribution to it, so will they ever? Let’s push this agenda in 2023 where we, the working class, deserve our needs met.
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