Economic growth is widespread in the world, but not to everyone’s benefit; rather the opposite, inequality is growing. 62 individuals have equal wealth as the 3.6 billion people that constitute the world’s poorest 50%.

Thus warns OXFAM, the international confederation of non-governmental organizations to combat poverty, in its recent report entitled “An Economy for the 1%” presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), by its Director Winnie Byanyima.

“While the income of the wealthiest has increased 44% since 2010, that of the poorest half is down 41%. Although the global economy has doubled in 30 years to 78 billion and global wealth has reached 267 billion (net of all financial assets and non-financial), it is increasingly evident that the majority are excluded from the deal. Oxfam warns that extreme inequality is being installed at world scale. Nevertheless, it has ceased to be part of the concerns of the elite World Economic Forum, in its most recent meeting as in the previous Forum 2014.

“The economic recovery has distanced these select clubs from any concern over social issues. Structural paralysis and underemployment are still part of the risks included only when they are asked directly, as stated in the 2016 Report on Global Risks issued by this organization. “

Oxfam also believes that one of the tools that enable the most powerful to further increase their profits –aside from the trend of the past 30 years to reduce the marginal rates of the higher incomes– are tax havens.

Although there are no official figures, research by Oxfam refers to recent studies that show that these fiscal havens –with low or no taxation– conceal an amount equivalent to the total wealth of Germany and the United Kingdom.

Oxfam’s report states that it has examined about two hundred companies, including the world’s largest, associated with the World Economic Forum, and the result is that nine out of ten of these are present in tax havens.

The resources that thus escape the control of governments, is estimated at about 100 billion dollars a year, causing cuts in the welfare state or raising taxes that “disproportionately affect the poorest the sectors of the population.”

One of the keys to the concentration of wealth lies in the increase of capital returns — from interest rates to dividends. In fact, in all the economically-advanced states and in most developing countries, the share of wages in the national income has been shrinking, “which means they benefit less and less from the economic growth”. This was pointed out by French economist Thomas Piketty in his book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, where he describes how the owners of capital observe their capital grow “steadily and at a significantly faster pace than the economic growth”.

In the labor scene, the wage gap between workers and management has expanded. The income of average employees has stagnated or declined, while those of top executives have skyrocketed. Indeed, “the wages not only fail to duly remunerate the efforts of the workers, but also fall short of the needs of individuals and families in terms of income.” In the European Union (EU), about 9% of the people who work are at risk of poverty and this percentage has grown in the last decade, the report said. An indicator that clearly shows this is that the gap between the rate of labor productivity and the growth of real wages has widened.

Oxfam is an international confederation of organizations working in 94 countries in finding solutions to poverty and what it considers injustices worldwide. It was originally founded in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of Quakers, social activists and academics from Oxford University in Great Britain. Its original mission was to persuade the British government to allow food aid for famine relief to the citizens of Greece caught between the military occupation of Nazi Germany and the naval blockades by the Allied powers.

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

January 30 2016

- Manuel E. Yepe - http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/