How are the rich getting richer? The world’s top 1% has increased their fortune by $26 trillion

With an economy of stagnation, high inflation, and high interest rates, many would be forgiven for thinking everyone has it bad. This has been proven to not be the case as Oxfam has proved with a release on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Using data from Forbes, Oxfam’s inequality report suggests billionaire fortunes have increased by $26 trillion, while the bottom 99% only saw their net worth rise by $16 trillion.

“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International. “Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires — a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest.”

The information has been deliberately dropped at a time to put pressure on the world’s richest. Davos is well-known for the host of business and world leaders who meet for the month-long discussions. It has been criticised by some for being an easy holiday masquerading as an important summit. It doesn’t help that much of the transport to the Alpine resort is done by private flights, especially while much of the poorest parts of the world are in acute danger of climate catastrophe.

“The rich and powerful are swarming to Davos to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors, using the most unequal and polluting form of transport: private jets, said Greenpeace’s Klara Maria Schenk. ” Meanwhile, [...] communities around the world are grappling with extreme weather events supercharged by the climate crisis.”

It’s the first time that extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously in 25 years, said Oxfam.

How have the rich made so much money during the pandemic?

Countries pumped companies with money as the pandemic spread, aiming to keep their values from plummeting. Interest rates were nearly zero for much of 2020 and 2021 which helped inflate asset prices, the sort of thing billionaires have in abundance. These actions combined allowed the world’s richest to vastly increase their wealth at a time where many didn’t know if their job would still be there when they could stop isolating. In one example, the wealth of UK billionaires grew by 20% in the last two years as well as the number increasing from 147 in 2020 to 177 today.

All this wealth accumalation has coincided with a collapse in purchasing power for ordinary workers as well as high inflation that puts the people most at risk in the greatest danger. By the end of 2021, 53 million Americans were using foodbanks to subsist, up by more than a third than the beginning of 2020. The increase is even more stark in the UK as the number needing foodbanks has increased by 81% since 2017. At the height of the pandemic this increase was more than 100%.