Inequality is a question of power. Oxfam

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Published by Sabrina Bergamini on 19 January 2024

The decade of great divides

Billions of people they see their difficulties grow in the face of increasingly frequent epidemics, wars, high costs of living and climate crises. On the other side there are a handful of scrooges who multiply their fortunes. The numbers of this increasingly accentuated gap are almost unimaginable.

Global billionaires today, Oxfam says, they are in real terms $3.300 trillion richer than in 2020 and the value of their assets has grown three times faster than the rate of inflation.

Since the beginning of the pandemic (and passant: it was supposed to make us all better, it traced a huge social and economic furrow) the 5 richest men in the world have more than doubled their fortunes, at a rate of 14 million dollars an hour. On the other hand, the aggregate wealth of nearly 5 billion of the poorest people has shown no glimmer of growth. If the wealth of the five richest billionaires in the world continued to grow as it does now, in about ten years we could have the first trillionaire in the history of humanity. At current rates, however, it would take 230 years to reduce global poverty below 1%. (2)

For most people In the world, the start of this decade was incredibly difficult: 4,8 billion people barely kept pace with inflation. Wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires and few Corporation to which growing profits accrue.

The value of assets of billionaires has increased by 34% since the beginning of this decade of crisis and it is expected that the number of millionaires will grow by 44% between now and 2027, while the number of individuals with assets equal to or greater than 50 million dollars will increase in the same period by over 50%.

Chapter Corporation

The 10 largest companies in the world have a stock market value that exceeds the combined GDP of all the countries of Africa and Latin America.

Who pays these inequalities? Workers, who, faced with the rush of inflation and the high cost of living, have lost purchasing power.

"For nearly 800 million workers employed in 52 countries wages have not kept pace with inflation. The related wage bill saw a decline in real terms of 1.500 billion dollars in the two-year period 2021-2022, a loss equivalent to almost a monthly salary (25 days) for each worker".

Inequality and power

Inequality However, it is not an impossible mission to fight. It is the result of precise public policy choices, sometimes of choices not made. It is a question of power that runs through unbalanced economic relationships and is the result of the concentration of power in the hands of a few. A sort of Robin Hood in reverse.

"Inequalities rather, they are the result of political choices (or, sometimes, non-choices) which in recent decades have produced profound changes in the distribution of resources, endowments, opportunities and power among individuals.

The dynamics of power represents, in particular, the main narrative key of our relationship. What comes under the spotlight in the international context is the economic dimension of power, the increased concentration of which - driven by the relaxation of competition protection policies and "facilitated" by the financialisation of the economy and by the increasingly marked presence of the private sector in the public sphere – has increased positional income, weakened the bargaining power of workers, especially the less qualified, and produced strong inequalities in the bonuses distributed by the markets.

A “reverse” redistribution with a transfer of resources from workers and consumers to owners and managers of large monopolistic businesses resulting in the accumulation of enormous fortunes in the hands of a few”, writes Oxfam. (3)

Inequality calls Italy

Italy is no exception. Indeed, it is a country with increasingly marked disparities, in which individual and collective opportunities are reduced and reduced to a minimum for those who find themselves in disadvantaged situations due to their social belonging or the lack of development of the territorial context in which they live.

The data available say that at the end of 2022 in Italy the richest 1%, in terms of assets, held wealth 84 times higher than that of the poorest 20% of the population.

The richest 20%. of Italians own over two-thirds of the national wealth while the poorest 60% hold only 13,5%.

Italy has long occupied the last positions in the European Union with regards to inequality in the distribution of income.

A very recent fact, published in January this year by the Bank of Italy, highlights that the 5% of the richest Italian families own approximately 46% of total net wealth (4).

The crisis of recent years has left an impoverished country, with increasing absolute poverty, and with a devastating impact of inflation on families with less spending capacity who cannot cope with the high cost of living by resorting to savings. The dynamic is destined to worsen due to the slowdown of the national economy, the reduction of compensation measures against the high cost of living and the abandonment of the citizen's income which leaves 500 thousand families without income support.

Tax the Rich

In front of this bloodbath, what to do? One of the actions that Oxfam promotes is to tax large fortunes. To have greater fairness in the tax system, we need to start with the introduction of a progressive tax on large estates.

The European Union it will then have to compete with the European Citizens' Initiative Tax the Rich (5). Through this instrument of citizen participation in European policies, the EU Commission is asked to introduce a European tax on large estates. These are additional resources that are requested from those who have so much more and occupy the top positions in society, to respond to the increase in inequalities also in Europe and finance a just and equitable ecological and social transition.

This tax on large estates it would be an "own resource of the Union", whose revenue would be used to support European policies of environmental transition and development cooperation, and would contribute both to the fight against the climate crisis and against growing inequalities (6).

Sabrina Bergamini