Oxfam calls for tax on billionaires to vaccinate the poor

London, Jan 17 (Prensa Latina) Oxfam International on Monday has called for governments to impose a one-time 99 percent tax on the world's billionaires who got even richer during the Covid-19 pandemic to fund vaccination for the poor.

January 17, 2022
09:46

According to the non-governmental organization dedicated to fighting poverty and inequality, the world’s 10 richest men doubled their fortunes since the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus spread across the planet in 2020, meanwhile at least 160 million people have been forced into poverty.

Since the pandemic erupted, a new billionaire has been minted in the world every 26 hours, said the report published Monday, prior to the virtual opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Among those billionaires are Tesla and Amazon founders, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, respectively; Bernard Arnaud, Chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton; Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer of Meta/Facebook; Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway; and Larry Ellison, executive chairman of Oracle Corporation.

According to Oxfam, those people have more money than the world’s poorest 3.1 billion people, and it would take them 414 years to exhaust their combined wealth even if they spend one million dollars a day.

The NGO added that a 99 percent tax on the extra income they earned during the pandemic could collect enough funds to produce Covid-19 vaccines for the entire population of the planet, fill the funding gap in the fight against climate change, and support efforts against gender-based violence in more than 80 countries.

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