According to some data made known by the Oxfam report "Rewarding work, not wealth", disseminated at the annual meeting of the Economic Forum in Davos, the gap between the richest and poor in the world would be widening.
About 82% of the net wealth increase, recorded between March 2016 and March 2017, went to the richest 1% of the global population, while about 3,7 billion people, who make up the poorest half of the world, did not perceived nothing.
The number of the rich, in the period of reference, has increased at the impressive rate of 1 every 2 days while, on a global scale, and more precisely in the period from 2006 to 2015, the nine-digit wealth has grown by 13% year, 6 times faster than the annual salary increase, of just 2%, which concerned the common workers.
Maurizia Iachino, president of Oxfam Italia, underlines that "a new billionaire every 2 days is not a symptom of a flourishing economy, if the poorest and most vulnerable sections of humanity pay the price".
The Report also points out that two-thirds of the wealth of the "paperoni" around the world does not derive from their work but is inherited or comes from monopolistic incomes, that is, they are the result of patronage relationships.
The report shows that the current economic system allows only a small elite to accumulate huge fortunes, while hundreds of millions of people struggle for survival with extremely low wages ".
Inequality is of grave concern also in Italy. Halfway through 2017, the richest 20% of Italians held over 66% of the national net wealth, the next 20% controlled the 18,8%, leaving the 60% poorer just the 14,8% of national wealth.
The share of wealth of the richest 1% of the Italians exceeded by 240 times that held overall by the poorest 20% of the population.
In the period from 2006 to 2016 we have seen:
- a decrease of 28% of the share of the national gross income for the 10% of the poorest Italians;
- an increase of 40% of total income for the 20% of the highest income earners.
In the 2016, on 28 countries of the European Union, Italy occupied the twentieth position in terms of income inequality available.
The Report also analyzes the reasons why, in the current economic system, the constant increase in shareholder and top manager profits corresponds to an equally constant worsening of workers' wages and conditions.
According to analysts of the international confederation of non-profit organizations, among the main reasons for this situation are:
- the frenzied race to reduce the cost of labor that leads to the erosion of wages (the dossier notes that women workers are the poorest and most crushed by social and economic inequality. All over the world they earn less than men);
- negligence towards workers' rights and the drastic limitation of their bargaining power in the global market (In Vietnam, according to the Oxfam Report, female workers, for example, "frequently operate in areas without security and those who are employed in the 'clothing do not see their children for months, because they can not go home because of the long working days and the derisory wages they receive);
- outsourcing processes along global production chains;
- the maximization at any cost of company profits for the benefit of emoluments and incentives granted to top managers;
- the strong influence exerted by private interests, capable of conditioning policies.
As noted by the president of Oxfam, the report shows that "the current economic system creates miserable and unequal, offering risky, under-paid and precarious jobs and systematically abusing the rights of those who work. Today 94% of those employed in the production processes of the largest 50 companies in the world are invisible people employed in highly vulnerable jobs without adequate protection ”.
In conclusion, Iachino states that "until for the global economic system the remuneration of the wealth of a few will remain a predominant objective compared to the guarantee of a decent work for all, it will not be possible to stop the growth of this extreme and unjust inequality registered in every part of the world".