Social Justice Activism

richest people, a small part of the wealthiest 1%, own about 0.7% of the human
population's wealth, which is the same as the bottom half of the population. In January
2015, Oxfam reported that the wealthiest 1 percent will own more than half of the global
wealth by 2016. An October 2014 study by Credit Suisse also claims that the top 1%
now own nearly half of the world's wealth and that the accelerating disparity could
trigger a recession.
In October 2015, Credit Suisse published a study which shows global inequality
continues to increase, and that half of the world's wealth is now in the hands of those in
the top percentile, whose assets each exceed $759,900. A 2016 report by Oxfam claims
that the 62 wealthiest individuals own as much wealth as the poorer half of the global
population combined. Oxfam's claims have however been questioned on the basis of
the methodology used: by using net wealth (adding up assets and subtracting debts),
the Oxfam report, for instance, finds that there are more poor people in the United
States and Western Europe than in China (due to a greater tendency to take on
debts). Anthony Shorrocks, the lead author of the Credit Suisse report which is one of
the sources of Oxfam's data, considers the criticism about debt to be a "silly argument"
and "a non-issue … a diversion." Oxfam's 2017 report says the top eight billionaires
have as much wealth as the bottom half of the global population, and that rising
inequality is suppressing wages, as businesses are focused on delivering higher returns
to wealthy owners and executives. In 2018, the Oxfam report said that the wealth gap
continued to widen in 2017, with 82% of global wealth generated going to the wealthiest
1%. The 2019 Oxfam report said that the poorest half of the human population has been
losing wealth (around 11%) at the same time that a billionaire is minted every two
days. The 2020 report, while noting that 2,153 billionaires owned as much wealth as the
bottom 4.6 billion people in 2019, highlighted the widening gap between genders largely
as the result of unpaid care work performed by women, and stated that "our economic
system was built by rich and powerful men, who continue to make the rules and reap
the lion’s share of the benefit. Worldwide men own 50% more wealth than women."
Wealth inequality in the United States
increased from 1989 to 2013.
According to PolitiFact, the top 400 richest
Americans "have more wealth than half of all
Americans combined." According to The New York
Times on July 22, 2014, the "richest 1 percent in
the United States now own more wealth than the
bottom 90 percent". Inherited wealth may help
explain why many Americans who have become rich may have had a "substantial head
start". In September 2012, according to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), "over 60
percent" of the Forbes richest 400 Americans "grew up in substantial privilege". A 2017
report by the IPS said that three individuals, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett,
own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population, or 160 million people, and that
the growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor has created a "moral crisis",
noting that "we have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and
Page 46 of 161