 At a time when poor and working-class people across the world are struggling under a cost of living crisis, new research has revealed a sheer scale of global inequality. As the world's wealthy gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Oxfam International published a report titled Survival of the Richest on January 16th. The findings are staggering. Of the $42 trillion in new wealth generated since 2020, 63% was captured by the richest 1%. The remaining 37% was held by 99% of the world's population. For every dollar of new wealth earned by a person in the world's bottom 90%, a billionaire gained approximately $1.7 million. For the first time in 25 years, extreme wealth has risen simultaneously with extreme poverty. 685 million people were estimated to fall into extreme poverty by the end of 2022. Meanwhile, billionaire fortunes have grown by $2.7 billion a day, a steep rise built on a decade which already saw the number in wealth of billionaires double. At least 1.7 billion workers are living in countries where inflation has exceeded wages. Studies conducted in the US, the UK and Australia found that between 54% to 60% of inflation was due to the increase in corporate profits. Over 820 million or 1 in 10 people are going hungry with women and girls comprising almost 60% of this population. This time of extraordinary crisis has served as yet another opportunity for the rich to expand their private gains. 95 food and energy corporations more than double their profits in 2022. Of the $306 billion in windfall profits, 84% were paid to shareholders. According to the World Bank, we are likely witnessing the largest increase in poverty and inequality since the Second World War. Conditions have been made worse by a record debt crisis that has engulfed much of the global south. Countries have been pushed to the verge of bankruptcy, spending up to four times more on debt payments than healthcare. 75% of governments are planning to implement spending cuts in the public sector amounting to $7.8 trillion over the next five years. Such drastic measures will impact critical public services while leaving the wealth of the rich intact. Instead of raising taxes on the incomes of the rich, governments have opted to raise taxes on goods and services, hitting the poor the hardest. According to Oxfam, only 4 cents of every tax dollar come from taxes on wealth. Tech billionaire Elon Musk paid a true tax rate of 3.2% between 2014 and 2018. In contrast, Albert Christine, a flower vendor in Uganda, pays a tax rate of 40% on his $80 monthly income. Half of the world's billionaires also live in countries that do not have an inheritance tax. Their descendants stand to gain $5 trillion in untaxed and unearned income, a figure larger than the GDP of Africa. Oxfam has called for the systemic and wide-ranging taxation of the super-rich. This includes the introduction of a one-off solidarity tax as well as windfall taxes. It has also demanded a permanent increase in the taxes on the richest 1%. At the end of World War II, the top U.S. federal income tax rate was above 90%, later averaging 81% till 1981. Oxfam has argued that such tax rates in other rich countries were key in expanding access to public services. An annual wealth tax of 5% on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires alone could raise $1.7 trillion a year. This would be sufficient to bring 2 billion people out of poverty and implement a 10-year plan to end hunger. It would be enough to provide universal health care and social protection for everyone living in low- and middle-income countries. There would also be funds to support countries in responding to a climate crisis for which the ultra-rich continue to bear disproportionate responsibility. Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today's overlapping crises. Oxfam's executive director Gabriella Butcher said in a statement, adding that it was time we demolished the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in the wealth somehow trickling down to everyone else.