NEW DELHI – It would take 476 years for the world’s top five richest men to exhaust all their money if they decided to spend $1 million per day, a new report has said.
Tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, all feature in the top five list.
According to the UK-based charitable organisation Oxfam, the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their wealth from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 — at a rate of $14 million per hour — while nearly five billion people have been made poorer.
If the present trends continue, the world will see its first trillionaire in less than ten years, but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years, the report noted.
“This inequality is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else,” said Oxfam International interim Executive Director, Amitabh Behar.
Billionaires are now $3.3 trillion or 34 per cent richer than in 2020, with their wealth growing three times as fast as the rate of inflation.
The report also mentioned that men own $105 trillion more wealth than women globally — the difference in wealth is equivalent to more than four times the size of the US economy.
A woman employee in the health and social sector would need to work 1,200 years to make the same amount of money that the CEO of the biggest Fortune 100 firm makes in a single year.
“People worldwide are working harder and longer hours, often for poverty wages in precarious and unsafe jobs. The wages of nearly 800 million workers have failed to keep up with inflation and they have lost $1.5 trillion over the last two years, equivalent to nearly a month (25 days) of lost wages for each worker,” the report stated. -IANS
