Super-Rich Thrive As Covid-19 Pushes Millions Into Poverty

Oxfam has slammed the growing gap between the rich and the poor which has significantly widened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The world's ten richest people more than doubled their fortunes from U.S.$700 billion to U.S.$1.5 trillion during the pandemic as poverty rates soared, according to a report on the state of the world inequality index titled Inequality Kills.

Oxfam says that inequality is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds. This is a conservative finding based on deaths globally from lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate breakdown.

Billionaires' wealth has risen more since Covid-19 began than it has in the last 14 years. At  U.S.$5 trillion dollars, this is the biggest surge in billionaire wealth since records began. The Oxfam in Nigeria has said that beginning in mid-March 2020, three Nigerian billionaires had their wealth increased by U.S.$6.9 billion while the majority of Nigerians got poorer in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oxfam recommended, among others things, that government urgently claw back the gains made by billionaires by taxing this huge new wealth made since the start of the pandemic through permanent wealth and capital taxes.