How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era of public action
Oxfam, 14 January, 2024
Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people worldwide. At current rates, it will take 230 years to end poverty, but we could have our first trillionaire in 10 years.
A huge concentration of global corporate and monopoly power is exacerbating inequality economy-wide. Seven out of ten of the world’s biggest corporations have either a billionaire CEO or a billionaire as their principal shareholder. Through squeezing workers, dodging taxes, privatizing the state and spurring climate breakdown, corporations are driving inequality and acting in the service of delivering ever-greater wealth to their rich owners. To end extreme inequality, governments must radically redistribute the power of billionaires and corporations back to ordinary people.
A more equal world is possible if governments effectively rein in and reimagine the corporate sector, and embrace the public one.
Read more here: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/inequality-inc/