“The 500 richest people on the planet collectively added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023 due in large part to a record-breaking rally in the U.S. stock market.
According to a Bloomberg analysis of its Billionaires Index the world’s richest people added an average of $14 million per day to their wealth over the past six months, “the best half-year for billionaires since the back half of 2020, when the economy rebounded from a Covid-induced slump.”
Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk saw the largest net worth boost of any global billionaire, adding nearly $97 billion in the first half of the year. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, saw his wealth grow by close to $59 billion, the second-largest gain of any billionaire.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaire-wealth-2023
The rest of the above piece berates the fact that they are not paying their fair share of taxes. The cry often is heard that ‘fair taxes’ or excess profits should be used to solve some crisis of hunger, poverty, or whatever ills are currently attracting attention.
From the piece below: ‘The windfall profits of leading food and beverage companies in 2021 and 2022 would be “enough to cover the $6.4 billion funding gap needed to deliver life-saving food assistance in East Africa more than twice over,” Oxfam and ActionAid noted.’
Any amelioration of these blights on a civilised world is to be welcomed but it is not a lasting solution. It is, in fact, not the only solution that removes once and for all the ever growing gap between the asset owning class and the vast exploited majority.
The solution is a money-free, class-free society where goods and services are produced for free use, not for profit.
This solution is not one that will come about without the active participation of a majority who understand that the underlying features of capitalism and the economic exploitative mechanism which is inbuilt into that system.
Those who have an interest in the continuation of their power and control are not likely to easily acquiesce in the removal of those things from their grasp.
As a poet articulated, we are many, they are few. So, with whom does the power lie?
From the same site comes this:
“An analysis released Thursday shows that 722 of the world’s top corporations made combined windfall profits of $1 trillion per year in 2021 and 2022 as people across the planet struggled to meet basic needs due to the price hikes that businesses have used to pad their bottom lines.
The humanitarian groups Oxfam and ActionAid found that the companies raked in $1.09 trillion in windfall profits—defined as profits significantly above a given corporation’s average—in 2021 and $1.1 trillion last year.
That’s an 89% increase in total profits compared to the average between 2017 and 2020, according to Oxfam and ActionAid’s analysis of Forbes’ “Global 2000” ranking of the world’s largest companies—a major windfall during a period in which extreme poverty and global hunger surged.
The two groups found that “45 energy corporations made on average $237 billion a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022” while “food and beverage corporations, banks, Big Pharma, and major retailers also cashed in on the cost-of-living crisis that has seen more than a quarter of a billion people in 58 countries hit by acute food insecurity in 2022.”
The windfall profits of leading food and beverage companies in 2021 and 2022 would be “enough to cover the $6.4 billion funding gap needed to deliver life-saving food assistance in East Africa more than twice over,” Oxfam and ActionAid noted.
“People are sick and tired of corporate greed,” Amitabh Behar, Oxfam’s interim executive director, said in a statement. “It’s obscene that corporations have raked in billions of dollars in extraordinary windfall profits while people everywhere are struggling to afford enough food or basics like medicine and heating.”
“Big business is gaslighting us all—they’re hiking prices to make monster profits, plundering people under the cover of a polycrisis,” Behar added.
“Government policy should not allow mega-corporations and billionaires to profiteer from people’s pain.”
Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently conceded that corporate profiteering has been a major contributor to price increases that have fuelled cost-of-living crises worldwide. Last month, IMF economists estimated that “rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europe’s inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy.”
Oxfam and ActionAid argued that governments should “claw back gains driven by profiteering” by imposing a 50-90% windfall tax on the profits of major corporations.
The groups said such a tax would generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue that could be used to lift people out of poverty, reduce hunger, slash energy bills, and support Global South nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
“Enough is enough,” said Arthur Larok, secretary-general of ActionAid. “Government policy should not allow mega-corporations and billionaires to profiteer from people’s pain. Governments must tax windfall profits of corporations across all sectors—and invest that money back in helping people and deterring future profiteering. They must put the interests of their great majorities ahead of the greed of a privileged few.” “
https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporate-windfall-profits