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This is no coincidence.
Oxfam’s annual inequality report is published on the same day that a billionaire is inaugurated as President of the United States surrounded by a bunch of cronies with even bigger wallets, while others of the same ilk meet for coffee chats in the luxurious surroundings of Davos, Switzerland.
The report shows that the wealth of the ultra-rich will have increased three times more by 2024 than in 2023, while 44% of the world’s population lives below the World Bank’s upper poverty line and the previous decline in poverty has stalled. In ten years, we will likely see five so-called “dollar trillionaires” – people who own over 1,000 billion dollars.
Rising inequality damages social trust and hampers economic growth and poverty reduction.
According to Oxfam, the total wealth of global dollar billionaires increased by 14.5 trillion dollars in 2024 – three times more than the previous year. Most of the super-rich’s wealth comes from inheritance; many have achieved it by running monopoly-like businesses.
The report also reveals how capital flows from poor to rich countries through loan interest. Low- and middle-income countries spend 48 per cent of their public budgets paying off debt, often to richer nations in the north.
Between 1970 and 2023, $23.462 billion in interest payments flowed from the Global South to the Global North. As a result, four out of five countries have been forced to cut budgets for schools and healthcare, further increasing inequality.
The world’s richest one per cent also accounts for a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions. Oxfam’s figures show that this group alone accounts for 16 per cent of the world’s total emissions – more than the poorest two-thirds of the world’s population combined.
In an op-ed in Information on January 19, Oxfam-Denmark’s Secretary General Lars Koch emphasizes that Denmark in 2025 has a special opportunity to influence the world’s development. Denmark has a seat on the UN Security Council, and in the fall of 2025, we will take over the presidency of the EU. This allows Denmark to work for more justice in international institutions and make them more representative.
Lars Koch reminds us that the distribution of power in large institutions such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank is very uneven and has hardly changed since the 1940s. The G7 countries, which represent less than ten per cent of the world’s population, have a whopping 41 per cent of the votes in these organizations.
Something similar is true in the UN Security Council, where countries from the Global North hold 47% of the seats, even though they only represent 17% of the world’s population. This means that the needs and challenges of the Global South are often overlooked, and poorer countries rarely have their interests heard.
Danish efforts to correct the egregious imbalances in international institutions could draw inspiration from the Better Order Project, which we have previously featured in CICED NYT.
While you wait for the billionaires to occupy not only Wall Street but also the White House, you can amuse yourself with the little pixie version of the inequality report. And if you’re more interested in analyzing the growing inequality, here’s a link to the full report with the telling title Takers not Makers.
