A notice appeared in the paper recently with the names and faces of eight men who have a combined wealth of $426 billion. According to Oxfam International, in 2015 this would have equaled the amount of wealth held by half the world’s population, the poorest half.
Oxfam International is a confederation of charitable organizations in 90 countries seeking to stop the injustices that cause global poverty. They have been tracking wealth and poverty in the world for a long time.
It’s remarkable that six of the eight men are Americans: Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg and William Gates. Only Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire, and Amancia Ortega, the Spaniard, are from other countries.
Oxfam blames what it calls this “obscene wealth” on laws that have shifted the tax burden form the wealthy to the middle class.
Supposedly this concentration of wealth has grown a great …