Oxfam, the international poverty charity, has joined forces with Microsoft co–founder Bill Gates calling for governments to implement “billionaire–busting policies” to curb the ever–increasing wealth of the world’s richest.
In a report released on Monday—coinciding with the start of the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland—the organization said that taxing billionaires just five percent would generate enough money to lift two billion people out of poverty.
Additionally, 1.7 billion workers across the globe are now living in countries where inflation outpaces wage growth, while the world’s wealthiest one percent of people have captured two–thirds of all new wealth created since 2020—amounting to $42 trillion.
Oxfam is now calling for “a systemic and wide–ranging increase in taxation of the super–rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering.”
“Taxing the super–rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises,” Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said in the organization’s press release. “It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super–rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships—just the superyachts.”
Taxes on the wealthiest used to be much higher, but currently only four cents in every tax dollar comes from taxes on wealth, according to the report, which slammed wealthy individuals’ income as “mostly unearned, derived from returns on their assets.”
“Yet it is taxed on average at 18 percent, just over half as much as the average top tax rate on wages and salaries,” Oxfam said.
The charity is hoping their report will raise awareness of the growing wealth gap, and has earned the backing of Bill Gates, who said he supported the idea of rich people paying more in taxes during a Reddit Q&A last week.
“I am surprised taxes have not been increased more,” he said. “For example, capital gains rates could be the same as ordinary income rates. I know things are tough for a lot of people.”
He added that it was common for those at the top to lose sight of what life is like for the majority of people, arguing that “being rich can easily make you out of touch.”
Gates sentiments aren’t particularly shocking, considering he announced last year he plans to give away “virtually all” of his wealth to his foundation, which is dedicated addressing issues like climate change and accessible healthcare.
As I look to the future, I plan to give virtually all of my wealth to the foundation. I will move down and eventually off of the list of the world’s richest people.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 13, 2022
Gates isn’t the only high–profile billionaire to call for more taxes to be levied on society’s wealthiest. Disney heiress Abigail Disney, Salesforce cofounder Marc Benioff and legendary investor Ray Dalio are among of a growing number of ultrawealthy people who have publicly expressed support for tax hikes on the rich.
However, there are some high–net–worth players who aren’t on board with handing more of their cash over to the tax man.
Elon Musk has been a vocal opponent to levying more tax responsibilities on the world’s wealthiest. In 2021, he slammed proposals for a so–called billionaire tax, saying having to pay more taxes would disrupt his plans to “get humanity to Mars.”
Home depot co–founder Bernard Marcus and supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, meanwhile, argued in an op–ed for the Wall Street Journal that “every additional dollar the government takes from us is a dollar less for this critical process of expanding America’s wealth and job–creating businesses.”
Oxfam is pushing for governments to do more to address the growing wealth gap.
“Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fueled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires,” the organization argued. It’s now up to governments to decide whether to act on these calls for “billionaire–busting policies”—or continue to prioritize the interests of society’s wealthiest.
