It’s time both the World Bank and IMF abandoned the short-term fixes and austerity that have repeatedly failed people in developing countries, says Anthony Kamande. With their joint annual meetings back on African soil for the first time in five decades, he sets out six ways both institutions can make real and lasting change: from debt restructuring to encouraging social spending and taxes on the wealthiest.
We need to talk about inequality in West Africa
As the African Union and regional economic communities gather to discuss their economies, the gulf between the rich and the rest in West Africa needs to be top of the agenda, says Mohamadou Fadel Diop – and that conversation must give serious attention to inequality-busting policies such as reversing austerity and debt cancellation.
Think informal women workers don’t pay tax? Actually they pay more tax than Elon Musk…
The reality is that hundreds of millions of informal and unpaid women workers are paying way more than their fair share – while the super-rich avoid taxes with impunity. Alex Bush, Clare Coffey and Saleha Shah debunk some myths about tax and women’s informal work.
Welcome to the era of ‘greedflation’
Corporations that dominate food and fuel markets have been using the war and pandemic as a smokescreen to bump up their prices much more than their costs. Oxfam’s Alex Maitland explains how increased corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation.
The super-rich pay lower taxes than you – and here’s how they do it…
How do the wealthy get away with paying a lower percentage of their income and wealth in taxes than ordinary people? A big part of the answer is that many of their fortune streams, from dividends to inheritance, are chronically undertaxed, says Chiara Putaturo in our latest blog for Davos 2023
Whether in Asia, Africa or North America, it’s been a profitable polycrisis for billionaires
Around the world it seems the pandemic and surging food and fuel prices have actually boosted the wealth of the super-rich, even as they pushed hundreds of millions of ordinary people into misery and penury, says Anthony Kamande in our second blog for Davos 2023
Taxation of the super-rich has collapsed: as one in eight people go to bed hungry, that simply has to change
When even millionaires are pleading to be taxed so governments can tackle our colliding global crises, we can see there’s something rotten in the state of economic policy. Max Lawson introduces Oxfam’s 2023 Davos report, ‘Survival of the Richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality’
Asian countries are making women and carers pay a painful price for austerity
A recent analysis by Oxfam ranked Asia as the worst global region for investment in public services. In our final blog for the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence, Myrah Nerine Butt spells out how such economic policy choices add up to structural violence against Asian women
How can we tackle the pain austerity inflicts on women? Start by really seeing and valuing the work they do
As Oxfam releases a new report highlighting austerity as a form of gender-based violence, Anam Parvez and Clare Coffey identify three deep-rooted attitudes at the root of this economic violence, including the idea that the work women do isn’t real work
Which governments really care about inequality? Not many, our new global index suggests
As Oxfam launches its latest index that rates countries’ commitment to reducing inequality, Anthony Kamande reflects on how poor policy choices impacted his own family in Kenya, points out how ordinary people have lost out amid the pandemic and inflation, and highlights a few governments showing the way forward