While Covid-19 has pushed many into poverty, the pandemic has brought huge benefits for some of the wealthiest, renewing calls for fairer taxes, says The Observer.
It reports that ten of the richest people in the world have boosted their already vast wealth by more than $400 billion (£296 billion) since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Their businesses were reportedly boosted by lockdowns and financial crises across the globe.
The extra wealth accumulated by the 10 men – approximately $450 billion, using Forbes figures – over the past nine months is more than the £284 billion the British government is estimated to have spent on tackling the pandemic and the economic damage it has wrought on its 66 million people, the newspaper wrote on Saturday.
It referred to a report by the campaign group Americans for Tax Fairness, which has estimated the collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has risen by $1.1 trillion over the same period.
“Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major Covid relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches. Their wealth growth is so great that they alone could provide a $3,000 stimulus payment to every man, woman and child in the country, and still be richer than they were nine months ago,”Frank Clemente of Americans for Tax Fairness was quoted to have said.
The moment the billionaires witnessed a surge in their wealth, poverty has increased alarmingly in countries like Bangladesh during the pandemic, hampering the progress made by those countries in the previous decades.
Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, has watched his wealth rocket by $70 billion since March to a record $185 billion as hundreds of millions of people trapped at home turned to the online delivery giant to keep themselves fed and entertained, said the Sunday edition of the British newspaper The Guardian.
It observed that other members of the super-rich elite who have seen huge financial benefits during the crisis include: Elon Musk, the maverick founder of Tesla; Bernard Arnault, the French billionaire who owns most of luxury brand portfolio LVMH; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg; and Google’s Larry Page.
Ana Arendar, the head of Oxfam’s inequality campaign, reportedly said the fact that the richest of the rich have made so much money during the coronavirus pandemic “proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the global economic system is not fit for purpose”.
“Extreme poverty is rising for the first time in a decade and hundreds of millions of people face dire hardship; in many cases failing into debt, skipping meals and being forced into destitution,” she was quoted to have said. “Governments need to stop pandering to the richest. A wealth tax would barely make a difference to the fortunes of the richest but could provide a lifeline for those hit hardest by the pandemic.”
While many small businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Amazon’s shares have increased by 90 per cent since March, the report pointed out.
Bezos, who started Amazon in his garage in 1994, still owns 11 per cent of the company’s stock, as well as space travel venture Blue Origin and the Washington Post.
Last week his ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott, revealed she had given away $4.0 billion to good causes in the past four months, taking her donations since the pandemic started to nearly $6.0 billion. Scott has a fortune of more than $50 billion (£37 billion) after her divorce settlement with Bezos last year and has pledged to give away much of her wealth. She said Covid-19 had “been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling … [but had] substantially increased the wealth of billionaires”.
However, the report added, ElonMusk’s fortune soared to $153 billion, up from $25 billion in March, as investors bet that the pandemic would lead governments to speed up the switch from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. Musk, 49, owns 20 per cent of Tesla and is now the world’s second-richest person, up from 35th in the global league table of billionaires back in January.
Bernard Arnault, Europe’s richest person, has seen his fortune double since the pandemic began, as demand for luxury brands in his LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton stable bounced back. Arnault’s wealth increased from $69 billion in March to $148 billion, to make him the third-richest person on the planet, the newspaper said.
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft turned philanthropist and the fourth-richest person, has an estimated $120 billion fortune. Gates’s wealth has increased by about $20 billion since March. Over the same period he has reportedly committed billions to the development of coronavirus vaccines and healthcare projects related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The other billionaires to have significantly boosted their fortunes since the pandemic began are Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who saw his wealth increase by about 80 per cent to $100 billion, investor Warren Buffett, whose fortune increased by 26 per cent to $85 billion, and Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, whose wealth swelled by 50 per cent to $88 billion. Google’s Larry Page increased his wealth by half to $76 billion, his co-founder, Sergey Brin, saw a similar increase to $74billion, and Amancio Ortega, founder of Inditex, saw his fortune rise 47 per cent to $75 billion, added the Guardian report.