Washington-Sana
Despite its catastrophic impact and the human and economic losses incurred by the entire world, the Corona virus and the dangerous strains that emerged from it were a trump card that brought fantastic profits to many rich people around the world, whose number increased and their wealth increased, according to new data.
A new report prepared by the international charity Oxfam revealed that the ten richest men in the world have doubled their fortunes since the start of the Corona pandemic in late 2019, indicating that this was not a coincidence, but rather the result of structural policies that serve the richest and most influential people.
The report indicated that in contrast to the growth in the wealth of the ten richest men in the world, the incomes of 99 percent of the world’s population declined, noting that the Corona epidemic crisis contributed to the emergence of 20 new billionaires in Asia, while about 140 million people in this continent plunged into the cycle of poverty with the loss of their jobs. As a result of the outbreak of the epidemic, the general closures imposed to reduce the spread of infections and the accompanying economic recession destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
In a related context, data published by the American magazine Forbes, which is primarily concerned with counting wealth and monitoring the growth of financial institutions and companies around the world, revealed that the wealth of American billionaires increased by 70 percent during the Corona epidemic, with a total of 2.1 trillion dollars in just over a year.
Data analyzed by Americans for Tax Justice and the Institute for Policy Studies on Inequality also showed an increase of nearly $3 trillion from March 18, 2020 to October 15, in parallel with the increase in the number of billionaires in the United States from 614 to 745 during the same period.
According to the new analysis, Elon Musk, CEO of the electric car maker Tesla, and Jeff Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon, made the largest financial gains, as the net wealth of the former rose by 751 percent to $ 184 billion and the second by more than 70 percent, from 113 to 192.2 billion dollars.
An investigation by ProPublica last June revealed that more than twenty of the wealthiest Americans paid a real tax rate of only 4 percent between 2014 and 2018, while a specialized report published by Forbes revealed the emergence of new rich people around the world with the support of inventing vaccines against the Corona virus or Selling special devices to detect it.
The report indicated that with many people losing their lives and others their jobs, the inequality gap has widened more on a global level, and the richest people have benefited financially as a result of the other side of the Corona virus, which has benefited the pockets of the wealthy in exchange for the psychological, mental and physical collapse of millions of people around the world.
Basma Kanon
Follow Sana's news on Telegram https://t.me/SyrianArabNewsAgency