IS OBSCENE WEALTH A MAJOR PROBLEM FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.

Whilst the environment suffers from the excess of extremes of purchases by wealthy individuals with luxury cars, boats, planes, properties, jewellery etc the poorest suffer from the climate extremes made worse by this never ending increase in unnecessary show of affluence. The richest 1% of people in the UK are now wealthier than 70% of the population combined, according to analysis by Oxfam. A report by the charity highlights how the 685,500 richest people in Britain are worth a total of £2.8 trillion, compared with 48 million people in the UK whose combined wealth totals £2.4 trillion. Oxfam’s report, called Survival of the Richest, builds a picture of widening worldwide inequality, after extreme poverty and extreme wealth increased simultaneously over the past two years for the first time in quarter of a century. At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and more than 820 million people – roughly one in 10 people on Earth – do not have enough food. Oxfam is calling for a wealth tax of up to 5% on the super-rich to raise £1.4 trillion each year, which the charity argues is enough to lift two billion people out of poverty. Oxfam also found that 95 food and energy corporations more than doubled their profits in 2022, making £251 billion in windfall profits, and paying out 84% of this sum to rich shareholders.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *