Ireland’s two richest billionaires now have more combined wealth than the bottom half of the country’s population, a new Oxfam report has found.
Oxfam’s annual inequality report, which derived its calculations from the Forbes list of rich people, found that Ireland’s richest 1% own 35.4% of the country’s financial assets.
Oxfam Ireland is calling on the government to introduce an “ultra-wealth tax”, saying it could raise up to €9.2 billion a year in tax revenue.
Bríd McGrath from Oxfam Ireland said it was now time for states “including the Irish state” to reassert themselves.
“We are calling on governments to properly tax wealth and close tax avoidance loopholes,” she said.
Mr McGrath said he did not believe “every penny” of taxpayers’ money should go to companies that “abuse their dominant position, fail to pay their workers a living wage and refuse to reduce their carbon footprint”. He said no.
“These companies should be left out of the picture when it comes to grants, tax breaks and other relief measures during budget planning,” he added.
Oxfam Ireland is also supporting the United Nations’ work to set clear targets for reducing wealth inequality, following US economist Joseph Stiglitz’s suggestion that all countries should aim to: It calls on governments to become “spokespeople” for the Global South by supporting the Global South. The bottom 40% of the population has about the same income as the richest 10%, known as Palma 1.
The report predicts that if current trends in global wealth inequality continue, the first billionaire will be created within 10 years and poverty “will not be eradicated for another 229 years.”
Oxfam found that the world’s five richest people have more than doubled their wealth since 2020, while 5 billion people have become poorer over the same period.
From Oxfam’s inequality report.
Oxfam released the report today as billionaires gather for a summit in the Swiss resort of Davos.
According to the report, the wealth of the world’s top five billionaires has jumped from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020.
Amitabh Behar, interim executive director of Oxfam International, said: “We are facing a decade of division, with billions of people bearing the economic shocks of a pandemic, inflation and war, while the wealth of billionaires soars.” He said he was witnessing “the beginning of a crisis.”
Behar said this inequality is “not a coincidence.”
“The billionaire class allows corporations to provide them with more wealth at the expense of everyone else,” he said.
You can read the full Oxfam inequality report here.
