Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011.Jason DeCrow, File/AP
- It could take centuries to address poverty and wealth inequality, reports have found.
- Meanwhile, many big corporations and billionaires continue to see exponential growth.
Addressing wealth inequality will take some big commitments — especially from the wealthiest players in the game.
In its annual inequality report, Oxfam International found it will take some 230 years to solve poverty. Meanwhile, we'll have the world's first trillionaire in the next decade.
The report's authors also said big businesses are aiding wealth inequality as they try to maximize profits for shareholders. Here's how:
1. Rewarding the wealthy over the laborers.
Big corporations are preserving a status quo that harms the working class, Oxfam's report found.
Inflation has far surpassed wages, causing almost 800 million workers to lose out on $1.5 trillion in wages over the last two years, according to Oxfam's analysis. Those affected most included women and racial minorities.
Yet some corporations are using their influence, Oxfam says, to fight federal minimum wage increases and minimize child labor laws. Others focus on anti-unionization efforts, keeping workers in a weakened position relative to executives and shareholders.
2. Withholding their fair share in taxes.
The wealthy business owners and their corporations have engaged in a "sustained and highly effective war on taxation," Oxfam found.
Though some of the mega-wealthy have voiced the need for them to pay their fair share, but the disparities are still gaping and calls for a global billionaire tax, which could yield as much as $250 billion annually, have not gained traction.
"Corporate taxes are disproportionately borne by the richest, thus the collapse in corporate taxes in recent decades has essentially provided another tax cut for the wealthy," Oxfam's analysis found.
3. Commercializing public services.
The wealthy have found that an easy way to generate more wealth is by privatizing public services like education, healthcare, and even water access. As private equity firms increasingly seep into the public sector, they undermine the state's ability to provide equitable, universal services.
"Privatization can drive and reinforce inequalities in vital public services, entrenching gaps between rich and poor, excluding and impoverishing those who cannot pay while those who can pay are able to access good healthcare and education," Oxfam found.
4. Enabling climate change.
Climate change has put a clock on inequality, generally leading to worse outcomes along gender, racial, and socioeconomic lines, Oxfam found.
Billionaires around the globe "own, control, shape and financially profit" from businesses that rely on fossil fuels and greenhouse gases.
The wealthiest governments "have a particular responsibility" to combat this "given their disproportionate influence in setting global 'rules and norms,'" Oxfam's report found.
