{"id":30118,"date":"2018-01-25T07:02:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T12:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30118"},"modified":"2018-01-25T07:02:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T12:02:06","slug":"the-billionaire-boom-82-of-global-wealth-produced-last-year-went-to-richest-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30118","title":{"rendered":"The Billionaire Boom: 82% of Global Wealth Produced Last Year Went to Richest 1%"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Billionaire Boom: 82% of Global Wealth Produced Last Year Went to Richest 1%<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Forida is a 22-year-old sewing machine operator in a clothing factory in Dahka, Bangladesh. She often works 12-hour days producing clothes for brands such as H&M and Target. Sometimes, during busy production cycles, the hours are even longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, I worked until midnight for a full month,\u201d Forida explained. \u201cI used to feel sick all the time. I was stressed about my son and then after I got home from work, I had to clean the house and cook and then go back to work again the next morning. I would go to bed at 2am and get up at 5.30am each day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with the combined income from her husband, Forida\u2019s family barely had enough food to eat.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a CEO from a top clothing brand would have to work only four days to earn what a garment worker in Bangladesh earns in a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Forida\u2019s story is included in a report released today by the anti-poverty organization Oxfam. The report, Reward Work, Not Wealth, reveals how the global economy empowers the richest 1% while hundreds of millions of people struggle to survive.<\/p>\n

Oxfam found that 82% of the global wealth produced last year went to the richest 1% of the world\u2019s population. In other words, four out of every five dollars of wealth created in 2017 went into the pockets of the 1%.<\/p>\n

While a new billionaire was created every other day, the 3.7 billion people making up the poorest half of the world\u2019s population saw no increase in their wealth last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,\u201d said Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of Oxfam. \u201cThe people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Billionaire Boom: 82% of Global Wealth Produced Last Year Went to Richest 1% Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair Forida is a 22-year-old sewing machine operator in a clothing factory in Dahka, Bangladesh. She often works 12-hour days producing clothes for brands such as H&M and Target. Sometimes, during busy production cycles, the hours are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1253,18120,5493,1621,9881,868],"class_list":["post-30118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-1253","tag-ben-dangl","tag-counterpunch","tag-inequity","tag-oxfam","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30119,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30118\/revisions\/30119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}