Inside Out | When even the super-rich are embarrassed by their wealth, it’s time to make them pay more tax
- During a pandemic that has pushed 160 million people into poverty, billionaires doubled their wealth and luxury goods sales have surged as the rich seek to ‘live now’
- With millionaires themselves calling for a tax revamp that could raise 2.3 billion out of poverty, why isn’t it being done?
Who could have imagined that a tragic pandemic, which has killed almost 6 million people and sickened 340 million, pushed more than 160 million into acute poverty and stripped trillions of dollars from the global economy, could have coincided with unparalleled prosperity for the world’s super-rich?
Oxfam calculates that a 99 per cent one-off tax on that 20-month windfall would have paid for vaccinating the entire world and funding universal health care globally – and still left these men US$8 billion better off than when the pandemic began.
It estimates that the world’s 2,755 billionaires – up by 660 from 2020 – saw their combined wealth rise by US$5 trillion in the same period, “while poverty is contributing to the death of 21,000 people per day”, and while women’s earnings worldwide fell by US$800 billion. However you tweak these numbers, they paint a breathtaking picture of gross inequality. And these ballpark judgments are confirmed in many luxurious directions.
Take Torsten Muller-Otvos, the boss of Rolls-Royce cars, who on January 10 reported 2021 was the best year of sales in the company’s 117-year history – up 49 per cent to 5,586 vehicles. Still, it was not so much the numbers as Muller-Otvos’ explanation that was astonishing: “Quite a lot of people witnessed people in their community dying from Covid. That makes them think life can be short, and you’d better live now.”
Other luxury carmakers reported a similar “live now” boom. At Mercedes, Maybach sales jumped 50.7 per cent, while at BMW, Bentley sales were up 31 per cent.