Thread by @NabsIMA

The biggest surge in billionaire wealth since records began.

A new billionaire created every 26 hours this pandemic. While Covid19 has left 99% of humanity worse-off.

New @Oxfam inequality report out today. Deep breath. Its chilling.

A 🧵

#DavosAgenda edition.cnn.com/2022/01/16/bus…

Proud to be lead author of this new paper, as part of an exceptional team (some I can tag here)

Each Davos we release shocking data. But we're gonna need to find new adjectives this year.

Billionaire wealth has surged more since pandemic began than in 14 years before combined.

The world's ten richest men alone doubled their fortunes since the pandemic began.

That's at a rate of $15,000 a second. Bonkers. Unprecedented.

If these 10 billionaires lost 99.999% of their wealth today, they'd still be richer than 99% of humanity.

bbc.com/news/business-…

This year's @Oxfam paper makes the case that more than create unhappy and unfair societies, inequality kills.

We put a figure on it.

Inequality contributes to one death every four seconds.

A conservative estimate.

Full report: oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/hand…

Inequality of income is now a stronger indicator of whether you'll die from Covid19 than age. (Well put in @TheEconomist here
economist.com/finance-and-ec…)

While millions have died in poorer countries with scant access to Covid-19 vaccines as pharma monopolies throttled their supply.

We've got 8 billion reasons to combat extreme wealth. A truly universal problem.

When pharma monopolies foster vaccine apartheid we're all at risk from inevitable variants.

When the 1% use twice CO2 as 50% of humanity they fuel a crisis that harms us all.bbc.com/news/world-591…

Inequalities now profoundly widening across class, race, gender, between countries. Most where axes meet.

Eg McKinsey shows 3.4 million Black Americans would be alive today if their life expectancy was same as White people’s (up from 2.1 mil pre-pandemic) mckinsey.com/featured-insig…

Gender parity is set back by a whole generation, says the @wef. Closing it increased from 99 years to 135 years.

weforum.org/reports/global…

Women face in many countries a second pandemic: of gender-based violence.

Much more in paper. Vaccine apartheid fuels every inequality.

What's driving the boom at the top?

So much of the trillions of dollars pumped by central banks into financial markets, ended up pocketed by billionaires riding a stock market boom. A rise in monopoly power. Privatization. New unregulated entities. More. reuters.com/article/us-imf…

Relying on the same ol' economic playbook to deal with this unprecedented crisis won't change this.

Social movements show where we must go. Some governments today too.

History offers inspiration: post-WW2 yes, but post-colonial independence leaders too. theatlantic.com/notes/2019/01/…

We want to see governments clawing back extreme wealth into the real economy:

One-off solidarity taxes, evolving into permanent progressive taxes to fundamentally reduce wealth inequality.

It can be done. Countries like Argentina set a great example.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Let's invest resources strategically in the proven, powerful means to reduce inequality.

Such as universal healthcare - countries like Costa Rica show how it can be done - and social protection. In creating a fossil-fuel free world. In ending GBV.

podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/wil…

But we need to change the rules of the market and globalization to not create huge inequality in the first place. Such as:
Taking on monopolies that menace democracies;
Strengthening workers’ rights;
Abolishing sexist laws that prevent 3 bil women from the same job choices as men

The most urgent task is obvious: end this pandemic.

To do so, rich governments have to break their self-defeating protection of pharma monopolies held over Covid-19 vaccines - and insist the tech is shared with qualified manufacturers that can make them: hrw.org/news/2021/12/1…

The choice facing us is this.

It's up to us.

ENDS