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.