Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report
Oxfam warns Trump policies risk driving inequality to new heights – but Democrats have also exacerbated wealth gap
The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.
The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap.
Using
Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, researchers also calculated
that the top 1% of households gained 101 times more wealth than the
median household during that time span and 987 times the wealth of a
household at the bottom 20th percentile of income. This translated to a
gain of $8.35m per household for the top 1% of households, compared with
$83,000 for the average household during that 33-year period.
Meanwhile,
over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are
considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of
the national poverty line.
When pitting the US
against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest
rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and
infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.
“Inequality
is a policy choice,” said Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for
economic justice at Oxfam America. “These comparisons show us that we
can make very different choices when it comes to poverty and inequality
in our society.”
The report outlines the way
that systems in the US, including the tax code, social safety nets, and
worker’s rights and protections, have been slowly dismantled, allowing
concentrated wealth to turn into concentrated power.
Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”,
passed by Congress in May, has been one of the “single largest
transfers of wealth upwards in decades”, according to the report, by
cutting tax for the wealthy and corporations.
But over the last few decades, Republicans have not acted alone.
“Policymakers
have been choosing inequality, and those choices have had bipartisan
support,” Riddell said. “Policy reforms over the last 40 years, from
cuts to taxes and the social safety net, to labor issues and beyond,
really had the backing of both parties.”
Policy
recommendations outlined in the report fall into four categories:
rebalancing power through campaign finance reform and antitrust policy;
using the tax system to reduce inequality through taxes on the wealthy
and corporations; strengthening the social safety net; and protecting
unions.
These
solutions can be tricky to carry out politically because of long-term
stigmatization, particularly of social safety nets and taxation. The
report refers to the concept of the “welfare queen” popularized during
Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, while taxation has always been
seen as repressive for all rather than as a tool for addressing
inequality.
“What’s really needed is a
different kind of politics,” Riddell said. “One that’s focused on
delivering for ordinary people by really rapidly reducing inequality.
There are sensible, proven reforms that could go a long way to reversing
the really troubling trends we see.”
The
report features interviews with community leaders who are actively
working to reduce inequality, even as progress has seemingly stalled on
the national stage. In one interview in the report, union
representatives for United Workers Maryland said the current moment
seems ripe with opportunity because many Americans are starting to see
how the current set-up isn’t working for them, but only for the people
at the very top.
“I think it’s brilliant that
they see this as an opportunity,” Riddell said. “I love thinking about
this moment as an opportunity to look around us and realize our broader
power.”