- Steve Coogan
Oxfam is campaigning to end global inequality. We've worked with partners to help shake up the debate. To fight for policy reforms on wages, tax, gender equality and public services.The debate has slowly shifted from whether inequality poses a threat to our societies, the economy and tackling poverty - to how we can address these issues, as well as the need for urgent action.
We need our governments to stop under-taxing rich individuals and corporations - and release the billions needed to invest in humanity and fight poverty. The time has come to boldly tax capital and wealth – as the IMF and others are now highlighting – at a far fairer level. We want to stop the poorer getting poorer and eliminate tax avoidance and evasion by corporates and the richest.
We need free quality healthcare and education worldwide. Our taxes should provide it. Free healthcare and education are powerful tools to drive equality – between rich and poor, and between men and women - and give people freedom from living in fear. The increasing trend of the privatisation of these services must end: they must be publicly-funded and publicly-delivered, not left to the market to only benefit a privileged few.
We need to end the scandal of big business handing out bumper pay packets to their bosses while their workers struggle to survive on less than a living wage. It's time to ensure all workers receive a minimum 'living wage' so they can live a life of dignity. And to end the gender pay pay gap.
As of 2018, 26 people own the same as the poorest 3.8 billion people of humanity. That’s down from 44 people last year.
16.4 billion hours of care work will be done today, by women, and they won’t be paid a cent for it. This in a world in which men earn 23% more than women and own 50% more of global wealth.
Seventy-five percent of women in Asia and Africa are in informal and insecure jobs. Rich men are the ones benefitting most from extreme economic inequality, while women are over-represented in the lowest paid and most precarious jobs.
The super-rich are hiding $7.6 trillion from the tax authorities. Corporates also hide large amounts offshore. Together this (tax dodging by wealthy individuals and corporations) deprives developing countries of $170bn a year.
Getting the richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth could raise more money than it would cost to educate the 262 million children out of school and provide healthcare that would save the lives of 3.3 million people.
The unpaid care work done by women is estimated to be $10 trillion - 43 times the annual turnover of Apple, the world's biggest company.
