Oxfam today is launching a five-year campaign to tackle extreme inequality, called Even It Up.
US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen spoke recently about the increase in economic inequality in the US, saying it runs contrary to the country's values of equal opportunity.
She's not alone in her concerns, and it's not just a problem in the US. A new report by Oxfam shows the number of billionaires has doubled worldwide since the global financial crisis, while in the same period at least 1 million mothers died in childbirth due to a lack of basic health services.
"A lot of assumptions about the way that economies will naturally adjust and ensure that there's a 'trickle-down' of the wealth to the people at the lowest levels… actually, that's not what's happening," Oxfam New Zealand executive director Rachael Le Mesurier said on Firstline this morning.
"What we're actually seeing is an increasing gap between the incredibly rich and the incredibly poor."
One example the report gives is the widening gulf between chief executive salaries and what the rest of us earn.
"We have examples of people earning 200 times what the people on the factory floor might be earning," says Ms Le Mesurier.
Perhaps most surprising finding in the report is that the gap between the rich and poor in South Africa is wider now than it was under apartheid.
Ms Le Mesurier says only intervention by governments around the world can fix it – left alone, the market will do nothing.
"The wealthy are getting wealthier, and what we're actually seeing is they become quite powerful, the small handful of people who are that wealthy, and they're able to influence things like corporate tax evasion," she says.
"Government interventions can work, we have seen that. Brazil is a country that has grown its economy significantly recently, and they've also managed to reduce inequality in that time."
She says efforts following World War II by governments to reduce inequality – including pensions, unemployment benefits and fair wages –have been undone in the last few decades, increasing inequality.
Oxfam's report comes a day after UNICEF said the level of child poverty in New Zealand had barely budged since the global financial crisis.
3 News
source: newshub archive
