Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos Among Billionaires Who Doubled Their Wealth During COVID-19 Pandemic, Oxfam Report Finds

A new report says that the world’s richest billionaires have doubled their wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The billionaires in question have doubled their wealth since pandemic started in early 2020, making inequality hitting "outrageous" levels, according to anti-poverty charity Oxfam.

"The gap between the rich and the poor was increasing even before the pandemic started," Irit Tamir, director of Oxfam's private sector development, told CBS News.. "But the pandemic supercharged this in a whole host of ways."

The world’s 10 richest people are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffet, according to Forbes.

"This year, what's happening is off the scale," Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam Great Britain's chief executive, said in a statement to the BBC.

"There's been a new billionaire created almost every day during this pandemic, meanwhile 99% of the world's population are worse off because of lockdowns, lower international trade, less international tourism, and as a result of that, 160 million more people have been pushed into poverty,” he said.

The billionaires saw their wealth double, from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion, during the pandemic, CBS News reported. They earned about $15,000 per second, Oxfam said.

"Something is deeply flawed with our economic system," Sriskandarajah told the BBC.

Oxfam’s report generally comes before the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, however, for the second year in a row, the meeting will be held online due to the pandemic, the BBC reported.

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