Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Larry Ellison are $1.6 trillion richer because the pandemic — fueling an ‘inequality crisis,’ Oxfam says

The 5 richest males noticed their fortunes rise by 114% between March 2020 and November 2023, Oxfam discovered. What’s extra, this elite group’s internet price rose to $869 billion from $405 billion between 2020 and 2023, the group stated — translating to $14 million an hour. 

“Oxfam’s new report finds an extraordinary concentration of wealth at the top, with the five wealthiest men — and they are all men — more than doubling their fortunes since 2020,” Abby Maxman, the president and CEO of Oxfam America, stated in a press release.

The richest 1% additionally owns 43% of world monetary property, Oxfam stated. The share was larger within the Middle East, Asia and Europe, the place the richest owned upwards of 47% of wealth.

Though “the United States is home to the most billionaires on Earth, including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, names that have become synonymous with obscene wealth,” Maxman added, “it is also home to tens of millions of people who face unnecessary hardship every day as a result of despicably low wages, an unfair tax code, and meager public services, to name a few.”

The group went on to criticize the impression of billionaires’ wealth on the worldwide financial system and democracy.

“No corporation or individual should have this much power over our economies and our lives — to be clear, nobody should have a billion dollars,” Amitabh Behar, the interim government director of Oxfam International, stated in a press release.

Putting apart billionaires, the hole between CEOs and staff alone has exploded over the past a number of a long time. Between 1978 and 2022, high CEO compensation rose greater than 1,200%, in contrast with the 15.3% rise in a typical employee’s compensation, in accordance with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning suppose tank. 

“The U.S. faces a deeply profound inequality crisis that’s been fueled by decades of exploding monopoly power, and which cruelly robs tens of millions of Americans of their rights and security,” Nabil Ahmed, the director of financial and racial justice at Oxfam America, instructed MarketWatch. 

U.S. billionaires particularly are $1.6 trillion wealthier than they have been in 2020, a 46% improve. The three richest ones as of the top of November — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison — boosted their wealth by 84%, Oxfam stated.

In distinction, the typical American’s actual median internet price solely rose 37%, to $192,900, between 2019 and 2022, the most recent 12 months for which information is on the market. The information comes from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. 

MarketWatch reached out to the three billionaires and the businesses they’re related to, and didn’t obtain rapid responses.

Musk’s fortune elevated by $216.2 billion between 2020 and 2023, Oxfam stated, a 737% rise after accounting for inflation. His enterprise empire contains the electric-car producer Tesla
TSLA,
-3.67%,
the area startup SpaceX and the brain-chip firm Neuralink. 

Bezos’s fortune, in the meantime, has elevated by 24%, or $32.7 billion, since 2020, Oxfam stated. The Federal Trade Commission and 17 attorneys common sued his firm Amazon
AMZN,
-0.36%
in September for what they known as anticompetitive and unfair methods by the company to “illegally maintain its monopoly power.” (Amazon known as the FTC’s swimsuit “wrong on the facts and the law,” including, “we look forward to making that case in court.”)

Ellison, the chairman, chief know-how officer and co-founder of software program big Oracle
ORCL,
+1.75%,
noticed his wealth improve by 107%, or $75.2 billion, since 2020, Oxfam stated. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont unbiased who usually votes with Democrats, has launched laws to tax what he calls “extreme wealth.” Sanders wrote in a foreword to the Oxfam report about his need to handle the yawning hole between the wealthy and working-class and poor individuals.

“In the United States, three people own more wealth than the bottom half of society, while over 60% of workers live paycheck to paycheck,” Sanders stated. “Despite massive increases in worker productivity and an explosion in technology, real weekly wages for the average American worker are lower today than they were 50 years ago.”

Meanwhile, “billionaires become richer, the working class struggles, and the poor live in desperation. That is the unfortunate state of the world economy,” he added.

Opponents of proposals like wealth taxes have argued they’d be difficult, costly and doubtlessly unconstitutional. Some U.S. billionaires, together with Musk, have additionally publicly criticized Democrats’ wealth-tax proposals lately.

The Oxfam report additionally famous that billionaires’ wealth was rising 3 times as quick as the speed of inflation. 

The fee of inflation has affected many Americans’ value of residing. The consumer-price index has decelerated to an annual fee of three.1%, down from its 40-year excessive of 9.1% in June 2022, however has not but fallen to the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal. Fed officers predict the speed of inflation will gradual to 2% by 2025.

“Other big winners” have been world firms, the report stated, a few of that are helmed by the richest males on the planet. Oxfam estimated that the most important corporations on the planet had seen an 89% improve in income between 2021 and 2022.

“Sharply increasing billionaire wealth and rising corporate and monopoly power are deeply connected,” the group added. “The profits of mega-corporations are in turn used to benefit shareholders, at the expense of workers and ordinary people.”