In Spain, a quarter of the global net wealth is concentrated in just 1% of its population, a level much higher than in 2008, denounces the NGO Oxfam Intermón
The pandemic and the current price crisis derived from the war in Ukraine have only increased the inequalities between the most favored and the least. The number of billionaires and their wealth have doubled in the last decade and in Spain almost a quarter of global net wealth (23.1%) is concentrated in just 1% of its population, when in 2008 that percentage was of 15.3%. This is how the NGO Oxfam Intermón denounces it in the report ‘The law of the richest’ published this Monday, the same day that the World Economic Forum begins in Davos, which -after two years of hiatus due to the covid- returns to congregate in the city Switzerland to the main international economic leaders, who will discuss how to avoid a global recession, especially after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
“The evolution of inequality in Spain is a worrying phenomenon: while wages lose weight and purchasing power, large companies increase profits and wealth in Spain continues to be concentrated in the hands of a few,” warned Franc Cortada, director of Oxfam intermon.
Thus, billionaires are recovering quickly from the current crisis and since 2020 the combined value of the wealth of Spanish billionaires has increased by almost 3,000 million dollars (2,769 million euros), which is equivalent to an increase of approximately 3 million dollars (2.77 million euros) per day. On the contrary, millions of households in Spain face difficulties to make ends meet, since inflation has reduced the purchasing power of families in the worst situation by 26% more than that of those with higher incomes, maintains this NGO. At the same time, wages in real terms fall to levels similar to those experienced during the worst years of the great crisis that began in 2008 and are already 4% lower than then, he specified.
In addition, the report highlights that the profits of companies, especially large ones, have been maintained and have even grown. In 2021 the profit of the Ibex 35 companies as a whole was already 63% higher than in 2019, and even 55% above the average of the results of the five pre-pandemic years (2015-2019 period). A trend that has also accelerated in the last year: only in the third quarter of 2022 they announced results 30% higher than those of the same period of the previous year, according to data collected in this study.
$2.7 billion more per day
And the same is happening globally. The richest 1% have hoarded almost two thirds of the new wealth (valued at 42 trillion dollars), generated globally between December 2019 and December 2021, almost double that of the remaining 99% of humanity, according to Oxfam Intermón estimates.
For every dollar of new global wealth that a person in the bottom 90% of humanity receives, a billionaire gets $1.7 million, which has made the fortune of billionaires grow at a rate of $2.7 billion a day , according to the figures included in this report.
“The current price crisis is also a crisis of inequality,” denounces this NGO, which highlights that “we could be facing the greatest increase in poverty and inequality between countries since World War II,” according to the World Bank.
“While the most vulnerable households struggle to fill the fridge or maintain an adequate temperature, the extraordinary growth in corporate profits in sectors such as energy and food has once again triggered the wealth of the richest,” the organization warns. According to his estimates, 95 large energy and food companies have more than doubled their profits by 2022, generating extraordinary profits for a total of 306,000 million dollars, and allocating 257,000 million dollars (84%) to remunerate their employees. rich shareholders. This greed fuels inflation.