As the markets start to slow down for the year, its easy to get the ruler and calculator out and work out where wealth has increased across the world, in a year marked by a second wave of COVID and inflationary fears.
One thing that hasn’t changed is inequality. The richer get richer – helped by the fact that the rich make the rules that govern who can get rich – with the global richest 1% “slice of the pie” having taken more than a third of all additional wealth accumulated since 1995, while the bottom 50 percent captured just two percent, according to the latest World Inequality Report.
“This increase was exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. In fact, 2020 marked the steepest increase in global billionaires’ share of wealth on record,” the document said.