The charity Oxfam has revealed that the gulf between the richest people in the world and the poorest has grown enormously over the past year. They claim that eight men, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, now hold the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people. A similar study released by Oxfam last year found that sixty-two people held as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population.

Eight men now have as much money as 3.6 billion people

Oxfam timed their announcement to coincide with the Davos summit in which the political and business elites of the world gather together at the prestigious Swiss ski resort to discuss the ongoing problems in the world and how they ought to be dealt with. However, it appears that Oxfam believes that these people should be taking instructions rather than dispersing them as many of the people in attendance are considered to be very much part of the problem.

Oxfam said that a few simple measures should be enacted on an international basis to begin bridging the gap between the world’s rich and poor. They claimed that higher taxes on wealth and income would ensure a more level playing field and would also help to fund investments in public services and public sector jobs. They also said that world governments should take more responsibility when it came to ensuring that workers were treated fairly and that hugely wealthy individuals were not able to avoid paying tax. Max Lawson, policy advisor for Oxfam, called upon billionaires to simply ‘do the right thing’ and ‘pay their taxes’.

In the past year, the public has been made vividly aware of the extent of tax avoidance among the super-rich. The Panama Papers, which revealed the details of offshore bank accounts, showed that numerous wealthy individuals from all corners of the globe were paying almost nothing in tax in any country in the world. “We have a situation where billionaires are paying less tax often than their cleaner or their secretary, “said Lawson. “That’s crazy.” According to Edelman, one of the world’s biggest marketing firms, this kind of flagrant inequality and economic injustice has led to a sharp decline in public trust in large institutions since the Great Recession of 2008.

With all this in mind, Oxfam’s warning to the billionaires that are currently alighting on Davos was stark. “It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when 1 in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day, “said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, “Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty; it is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.”

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