There are countries which have secured enough COVID-19 vaccinations for their people. There are those which are still trying to get enough. There are countries who are too poor to afford these vaccines and they will be assisted by the COVAX programme by World Health Organisation. Well, let’s be reminded that no one is safe until everyone is safe yeah. This is the reason why some countries are going to give vaccines to everyone in the country, regardless of whether they are citizen or even undocumented people.
I read an interesting title to an article in Article in bbc.com. It says that these 10 men’s wealth has increased a lot even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the names would be familiar to everyone and articles about their wealth appears nearly daily these days. Do note that this wealth increase is talking about just the increase part yeah. It does not include the original wealth before the wealth increase. Let’s look at some details in the article.
Article in bbc.com. World’s 10 richest men has seen their combined wealth rising to US$540 billion (RM2,183 billion) during the pandemic, according to Oxfam. The charity says that this amount is enough to prevent the world from falling into poverty because of COVID-19 and at the same time, to pay vaccines for all. This is why it is suggesting to governments to tax the super-rich.
Oxfam also claims that the billionaires’ fortunes rose due to rebounding stock markets and a “rigged economy”, causing rising inequality during the “worst economic downturn in a century”. The 10 richest people, whose fortunes rose by $540bn since March 2020, include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla founder Elon Musk and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a long article with lots more information. Do read it here: Article in bbc.com
Nope, I would not suggest they give up their wealth to buy vaccines for the world
Truth is, the richest are usually getting richer because with their wealth, even a small increase in terms of percentage is way higher than most people who has a 20% increment every year for the next 10 years. However, I do think that when their businesses are not doing well, then they would also be suffering many times bigger losses than most people who are working too. This is why just taxing them when their business(es) are profitable does not seem that fair to me. There should be some mechanism on how they could help the poor countries for example but not a sudden and new tax.
What are your thoughts?
Do you think that it’s a fair request to just ‘force’ the super wealthy to pay more via taxes so that more people could enjoy some of their wealth too? Everyone is entitled to their opinions yeah. As we read all the comments in social media these days, those comments could be extremely far away from what we believe too. Or perhaps there are other ways to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth instead? Thanks for thinking of a solution too.
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