BBC News
18 January 2013
Last updated at 19:12 ET
The 100 richest people in the world earned enough last year to end extreme poverty suffered by the poorest on the planet four times over, Oxfam has said.
Ahead of next week's World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the charity urged world leaders to tackle inequality.
Extreme wealth was "economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive", the report said.
The global economic system required reform so that it worked "in the interests of the whole of humanity".
A four-day summit involving political and economic leaders runs in Davos from next Wednesday.
In its report entitled The Cost Of Inequality: How Wealth And Income Extremes Hurt Us All, the UK charity said that efforts to tackle poverty were being hindered by an "explosion in extreme wealth".
The richest one per cent of the world's population had increased its income by 60% in the last 20 years, Oxfam said.
It reported that while the world's 100 richest people enjoyed a net income of $240bn (£150bn) last year, people in "extreme poverty" lived on less than $1.25 (78p) a day.
"We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many - too often the reverse is true," said Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking.
"Concentration of resources in the hands of the top 1% depresses economic activity and makes life harder for everyone else - particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder."
The charity called for a "global new deal to reverse decades of increasing inequality".
Its suggestions for leaders due at the Davos summit include:
Closure of tax havens around the world
A reversal of "the trend towards more regressive forms of taxation"
A global minimum corporation tax rate
Increased investment in free public services and safety nets for people out of work or ill
"As a first step world leaders should formally commit themselves to reducing inequality to the levels seen in 1990," Ms Stocking said.
"From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from a global economic system which is rigged in their favour.
"It is time our leaders reformed the system so that it works in the interests of the whole of humanity rather than a global elite."
I wrote this in 1998 and as the above Oxfam article shows, it's still appropriate economic change policy:
Tax the Super Rich
End Poverty, hunger and despair for millions of human beings in America and throughout the World
Tax the Super Rich and create an Economic Boom in the process
The Super Rich are an abomination before God. They are an abomination to any decent society. They are a serious threat to the Nation's international trade relationships. And they are supreme evidence of a dysfunctional social system guaranteeing social destabilization caused by enormous disparities in the distribution of socially produced goods and services. The Super Rich get that way by unconscionable conduct. By using unfair economic advantages over less economically fortunate or less aggressive individuals, the Super Rich are those individuals and families who run monopoly empires, ruling like kings over mass distribution systems such as energy, computers, drugs, weapons, sports, entertainment, communications, any systems or products that have gigantic mass markets. Once an enterprise or an individual reaches the multi-million dollar bracket, further gains become almost automatic. Bank interest payments alone will continually add gigantic amounts of new wealth to these few individuals and families.
Our current legal and business system favors Big Money enterprise over smaller enterprises. Competition gets reduced and eliminated as corporate monopoly players team together to force out competition from smaller enterprises. It's time to put a stop to the social irresponsibility of letting the Super Rich system continue. Putting enormous fortunes into the hands of a privileged few who earn as much as the combined earnings of 90% of American citizens cannot be tolerated. Putting enormous fortunes in the hands of these few Super Rich while millions upon millions of people live in constant threat of starvation is barbaric behavior and totally unconscionable in any civilized society worthy of the name. We must end the Super Rich socially criminal behavior like we ended Al Capone's criminal career. We tax them out of existence. We regain our economic strength by having Congress legislate either an Act of Congress or an Amendment to the Constitution that simply states:
1) All U.S. citizen will be taxed at a rate of 100% for any income exceeding one million dollars per year, with no exceptions, no loopholes, no way for any individual to acquire over one million dollars per year.
2) No individual or corporation can hold assets exceeding one million dollars per year or transfer assets exceeding a million dollars per year into foreign bank accounts without the same tax law applying.
3) All taxed income over one million dollars per year is to distributed to Social Security programs, Medicare programs, educational grants, low interest home and business loans to low and moderate income families and individuals, and environmental protection projects.
4) A fund will be established for United Nations and various church and charitable organizations' for bringing food, clothing, shelter, and cooperative community self-sufficiency programs and advisers to the world's desperately poor.
Taking this action will only effect the illegitimate prosperity of a very few number of individuals while it will bring the middle-class back into its rightful prominence as the stable economic and social backbone of America. This action will also begin an Economic Boom era for America's economy as the Super Rich are forced to divest their holdings and companies. With divestment mandatory, re-investment will occur and hundreds, if not thousands of new businesses and jobs will be opened up. This action will rightfully gain America new productive members of society as well as opening up huge new markets both within the U.S. and throughout the world. This action will start a worldwide precedent for all nations laboring under the thumbs of about 250 Super Rich individuals who's combined yearly incomes could feed and house the majority of the world's people and allow them the opportunity to rise out of unnecessary poverty and hopelessness. And this action won't stop the benefits of entrepreneurism. There's still plenty of room left for enterprising individuals to prosper with every year with the opportunity to become multi-millionaires.
Society should rightfully honor those individuals who organize economic enterprises that service and enhance our lives. But the economic rewards of entrepreneurial creation must not become ends in themselves or society suffers. A taxation system like this will return us pride in being Good Americans--giving as we receive--just as this taxation system will brings us new days when to be a "millionaire" will really mean something special once again.
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