Billionaires thriving as poor suffer in widening COVID-19 divide - Oxfam
With trillions of dollars pouring into ESG funds last year, 2020 has been called the “tipping point” year for this mega-trend. But many are predicting that the ESG boom will take off again on January 20th, 2021. That’s because after the most dramatic electioThe collective wealth of the world's billionaires rose $3.9 trillion between March and December 2020 to reach $11.95 trillion, the report calculated. The 10 richest men, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla founder Elon Musk, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saw their net worth increase by $540 billion. These billionaires have seen their wealth soar during the COVID-19 pandemic while the world's poor face years of hardship, charity Oxfam said on Monday as it demanded steps to tackle inequality. Nations have a "shrinking window of opportunity" to build a fair, green recovery, according to "The Inequality Virus" report, published as global leaders tune in for the World Economic Forum's virtual "Davos Dialogue" meeting. It could take more than a decade to reduce the number of people living in poverty back to pre-crisis levels, Oxfam said. The pandemic marks a "pivotal" point which has exposed economic disparities and built support for “transformative" policies, Oxfam said, calling for higher taxes on wealth and corporations alongside stronger protections for workers.
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