Participating in the World Economic Forum held in the Swiss ski resort Davos, some millionaire business people told political leaders; Against the livelihood crisis caused by price increases, he called for more taxes to be taken from rich people like themselves. Businesspeople joined the protest by left-wing activists on Sunday, voicing the demand for fairer tax policies around the world.
The World Economic Forum, which can be held face-to-face for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 epidemic, brought together the leading names of the political and business world in Davos this year.
However, the fact that the rich have increased their profits even more in the troubled processes of the last two years has led to growing criticism.
Phil White, a millionaire businessman from the UK, said: “As the rest of the world is crushed by the weight of the economic crisis, billionaires and world leaders come to discuss turning points in history at this closed facility. Our political leaders are the wealthiest, the wealthiest, the least aware of the economic impact of the crisis, and many of them known to pay very little taxes. It’s incredible that he came to listen to these people,” he said.
“The only sensible decision to come out of this conference is to tax the rich. Tax us!”
‘patriotic millionaires’
Representing a group of business people who call themselves the Patriotic Millionaires, Phil White made his fortune by working as an economic consultant. He explains that he came to the World Economic Forum because he thought the current economic system was collapsing, and he acted with leftists who demand change and groups that aim to fight poverty.
Over the past 10 years, a growing number of millionaires and billionaires in the US and Europe have been urging governments to impose higher taxation and cut special wealth taxes from the richest.
Although the number of millionaires participating in the protests in Davos is not high, there are millionaires from different countries in the open letter expressing the demand for high taxation on the rich to all the delegates attending the Forum.
Marlene Engelhorn, one of the millionaires who attended the protests, said: “As someone who has taken advantage of wealth throughout her life, I am aware of how crooked the economy is and I can’t just sit back and wait for someone to do something somewhere.”
“We’ve come to the end of the road this year, when another 250 million people have been pushed below the extreme poverty line,” adds Engelhorn.
UK-based international charity Oxfam, which publishes a report exposing economic inequality in the world every year during the Davos Forum, says another millionaire has been born every 30 hours for the past two years.
At the other end of the income spectrum, Gabriela Bucher, head of Oxfam’s international organization, notes that 1 million people fall below the extreme poverty line every 33 hours this year.
“Inequalities between countries have been declining for the past two decades. But during the pandemic, they have increased and increased at such a rate that they are going in two extreme opposite directions, with devastating consequences, which is reflected in people’s lives,” he says.
Energy prices had started to climb towards the end of last year, but after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they started to rise even faster. The prices of food and other necessities are also rising very fast.
Geopolitical tensions also make it difficult to resolve trade-related issues, and economic growth has slowed in much of the world.
The wealthier countries grew by an average of 0.1 percent in the first three months of this year, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). While the economies of the USA, Italy and Japan shrank in this period, the growth rate in France was zero. The UK economy was able to grow by an average of 0.8 percent in the last 3 months, and shrank in March.
The World Economic Forum is held later in 2022. For this reason, nearly 2,000 leaders, experts and business people who will participate in the Forum will not be able to do their usual ski getaways in the mountainous town of Switzerland in their spare time from the meetings.
The main agenda items of the Forum are the war in Ukraine, the exit from the pandemic and the climate crisis.