According to the analysis by Oxfam, the Fight Inequality Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires, a one-off 99% levy on the pandemic wealth which has gone to the super-rich rise would provide every adult in the world the Covid-19 vaccine and could also pay all unemployed $20,000 – and still leave them $55bn richer.
Morris Pearl, the former managing director of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said in a statement countries could no longer bear “the surge in global billionaire wealth as millions of people have lost their lives and livelihoods”. He is now the chair of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy people who support higher taxes on the wealthy. “Our economies are choking on this hoarded resource that could be serving a much greater purpose,” Pearl said. “Billionaires need to cough up that cash ball – and governments need to make them do it by taxing their wealth.”
Billionaires increased their wealth by $5.5tn from 18 March 2020 to 31 July 2021. The increase over 17 months was greater than the $5.4tn billionaires gained in the 15 years from 2006 to 2020.
Each vaccine dose is estimated to cost $7 in the analysis, which determined two doses for 5 billion adults would cost $70bn. To determine how much money from the one-time tax could go to unemployed workers, it found that 220 million people were unemployed globally.
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