PAUL O’BRIEN Vice President for Policy & Advocacy, Oxfam America @DPaulOBrien

This is Nairobi. That’s Royal Nairobi golf club. That’s Kibera. Extreme Inequality: How Bad Is It? And does one impact the other. In 2013, Oxfam began research extreme wealth disparities.

In 2013 In 2013, at Oxfam we recognized that while poverty was condition. Inequality was a relationship, and the relationship be/w the extreme rich and poor was getting worse. In 2013, we found that the 85 richest people on the planet, including a good number of American billionaires had the same wealth as the poorest half of the planet.

In 2015 In 2015, that number had fallen to 62

In 2018 Last year that number had fallen to 26.

A New Billionaire Every 2 Days 10 years ago, there was less than 800 billionaires in the world. Today, there are more than 2000. We see a new one every two days, and their wealth has grown to 9 trillion dollars. This group of people who wouldn’t even fill half fill radio city music hall own more than 10% of the global economy.

Wealth for the poorest half of humanity went down Meanwhile… Wealth for the poorest half of humanity went down 11% At the same time, last year, the wealth of the poorest half of humanity went down by 11%

Tax Trends How did this happen. Well a bit part of the reason is tax trends, globally and in the USA. Top income tax rates in the US dropped from 94% in 1945, to 70% in 1980, to 37% today. Governments in developed countries have been reducing both the top rate of personal income tax and the rate of corporate income tax over the long term. The top rate of personal income tax in the US was 94% in 1945, and as recently as 1980 it was 70%. Today it is almost half that, at 37%.393. In developing countries, the average top rate of personal income tax is even lower, at 28%, and for corporate tax it is 25%. The breakdown of tax revenues based on Oxfam calculations (data available for 35 OECD and 43 non-OECD countries for 2015) shows what mentioned on the previous slide, i.e. only 4% of the total tax revenues for the considered countries comes from wealth taxes. [OECD Stat. Revenue Statistics – OECD countries: Comparative tables]

Only 4% of tax revenue comes from taxes on wealth. Where is it going? The super wealthy are making out like bandits and stashing their wealth off shore. Today more than 10% of the globa economy is hiding in tax havens off shore. Tax avoidance, evasion and competition are robbing economies of the resources they need Contrary to what often thought, we can afford universal public services and social protection for everyone. However, for this to happen the richest individuals and corporations should pay their fair share of tax. This is currently not happening. An example of this is provided by the top rate of personal income in the US: such rate was 94% in 1945, and as recently as 1980 it was 70%; today it is almost half that, at 37%. [T. Piketty. (2014). Capital in the 21st Century] On the top of that, wealth turns out to be particularly undertaxed: only 4% of tax revenue comes from taxes on wealth (as the graph on the next slide shows) The biggest barriers to ensuring that the rich pay their fair share are currently represented by tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax competition. With respect to tax evasion, it is estimated that the super-rich are hiding at least $7.6 trillion from tax authorities and dodging an estimated $200bn in tax revenues. [G. Zucman. (2015). The Hidden Wealth of Nations] Only 4% of tax revenue comes from taxes on wealth.

Why do we care about this Why do we care about this? Because we believe the condition of poverty has to be addressed by the relationship between the extreme poor and extremely wealthy.

The IMF Economic inequality and gender inequality There is a bilateral relation between economic inequality and gender inequality. Societies where the gap between rich and poor is much lower are societies where women are treated more as equals.209 Involving women on an equal footing to men in the economy helps build more equal and resilient economies. Unpaid care is a huge hidden subsidy to the economy, which is ignored by standard economic analysis. Unpaid care is currently performed largely by women all around the world. If we were to try and quantify in economic terms all the unpaid care work done by women across the world every year, that would correspond to an annual turnover of $10 trillion – 43 times that of Apple. [Figure calculated based on Apple’s reported annual revenue in 2017 ($229.3bn)]

In developing countries doing most to protect women in childbirth We looked across all the countries we work

Two Worldviews on Service Provision Neoliberal Economy Human Economy Fees or Insurance Tax Financed Financial Incentives Values Driven Private Public Limited Universal Consumer Citizen

Money = Power

This is Nairobi. That’s Royal Nairobi golf club. That’s Kibera. Extreme Inequality: How Bad Is It? And does one impact the other. In 2013, Oxfam began research extreme wealth disparities.