A new report confirms it's time to eat the rich
A billionaire’s tax could save us all. Good luck with that, though.
How many rich white men does it take to end a global health crisis? Just 10, according to a new report, although we know damn well that ain’t gonna happen.
Oxfam released a pretty damning report this week that coincided with the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda. It found that enforcing a one-time tax on the 10 richest men in the world for the profits they made during the pandemic could fund everyone’s (and their mother’s) vaccines, as well as universal healthcare in countries that don’t have it. Oh, the hypothetical tax could also change the course of global warming, according to the Fast Company. There’s a lot else we could do with that money, as media outlets pontificated something fierce: cover our entire defense budget and pay for the extension of the child tax credit, for example. Shit, they could probably get rid of our acne, move our terrible exes to the moon, and buy all of us Yeezys.
Alas, none of us are expecting Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos to give up a portion of their wealth for the common good. The Oxfam study is really just meant to illustrate how much richer the richest people in the universe got during the pandemic, while the rest of the world suffered. A staggering 99% of humanity lost income at some point during the first two years of the pandemic, but the 10 richest men got twice as rich and made a nasty $1.3 billion per day for two years straight. The 99% windfall tax the Oxfam report proposes — which, again, we know is never going to happen — would only tax these billionaires for the profits they made since early 2020, which would still leave them $8 billion richer than they were before COVID-19, per Fast Company.
But there are more generous rich people out there: namely, the ones who are afraid of getting eaten. A group that’s calling itself the “Patriotic Millionaires” just begged the World Economic Forum to tax billionaires and millionaires more because even they felt like they weren’t paying their fair share, according to Reuters. Notable members of that group include Abigail Disney and George Zimmer.
We’ve all known that our economic system has always favored the ultra-rich, but this new study illustrates just how shameless and predatory things can really get. While the rest of us lost jobs and family members these past two years, the ten richest men were thriving and honestly, fuck them — except if any of them are reading this. In that case, I’m totes joking and I do currently accept donations to my Cash App.
