Skip to main content

Profiting from Pain


Wealth has no heart; it has much greed. This is the central message of the latest Oxfam Report. Titled Profiting from Pain, the report says bluntly, right in the beginning itself, that during the two years of the Covid pandemic, “the mountain of wealth” of the billionaires in the world reached “unprecedented and dizzying heights.” While the pandemic was a long and horrible nightmare for most of humanity, it has been “one of the best times in recorded history for the billionaire class.”

The ordinary people of the world were affected immensely by price rise. From New York to New Delhi, says the report, no one except the privileged billionaires escaped this evil. The cost-of-living shot through the ceiling. The pandemic period witnessed the biggest increase in extreme poverty in over 20 years.

The report is particularly worried about inequality in wealth distribution. The sort of inequality belched out during the pandemic period killed one person every 4 seconds. While this glaring inequality pushed the poor to death, the rich profited more than ever. Those engaged in the food, energy, pharmaceutical and technology sectors benefited the most, according to the research. The following extracts from the Report speak for themselves.

The brutal irony is that governments (including the Indian one) gave tax concessions and loan waivers to the affluent though they were already doing too well for themselves. Worse, the ordinary people were made to pay for those concessions by the increasing taxes imposed on fuel, cooking gas, and a whole lot of other essential things. It is going to get worse, according to the Oxfam study. “Worldwide, poorest households will be hit hardest by soaring energy prices,” says the Report.

One of the cruel paradoxes pointed out by this Report is that the pandemic has created 40 new pharma billionaires who profited from the monopolies their companied hold over vaccines, treatments, tests and personal protection equipment. Any humane system would have cut those profits so that suffering and impoverished patients would benefit. Not our kind of capitalism.

What is the way ahead? The study suggests that taxing the super-rich is the only real solution. 

It is not that all the super-rich are heartless. In Jan this year, there were reports that a group of more than 100 of the world’s richest people have called on governments to make them pay more tax. [Interestingly, there were no Indians on that list.] When capitalism acquires a heart, a large share of the world’s problems will vanish into thin air. Even the religious stirrings in countries like India are likely to disappear. Wealth is more enchanting than gods. Try it out for once, I dare say.

PS. All the three extracts above are taken from the Oxfam Report.

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Revealing, though not unexpected as one observed all that was going on. To see it in black and white does chill, though. The thing is this is nothing new... and nothing new has properly ever been tried because those who can implement the change are the very folk who will have to surrender their loot... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Profit before People. Unless this policy changes, it's going to get bleaker. The ray of hope is that some billionaires are asking to be taxed more.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...