New report shows widening wealth gap

A new report from Oxfam, the global emergency relief organization, contains a disturbing finding: The wealth of the richest 1 percent in the world is set to surpass the combined wealth of the remaining 99 percent in the next year.

Oxfam issued a bold call for world leaders to address rapidly growing income inequality across the globe, echoing the policies called for by President Obama in his State of the Union message.

This global distortion of wealth, Oxfam found, has been fueled in large part by the enormous growth of the financial and insurance sectors, which has spent billions lobbying public officials for laws and regulations that favor them while hurting average people.

“While corporations from the finance and insurance sectors spend their resources on lobbying to pursue their own interests, and as a result go on to increase their profits and the associated wealth of those individuals involved in the sector, ordinary people continue to pay the price of the global financial crisis,” Oxfam said.

Oxfam also zeroed in on the United States, reporting on the enormous amount of lobbying by corporations on budget and spending issues, which has the effect of weakening public services.

“These are the public’s resources, which companies are aiming to directly influence for their own benefit, using their substantial cash resources. Lobbying on tax issues in particular can directly undermine public interests, where a reduction in the tax burden to companies results in less money for delivering essential public services,” the report noted.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a shift in priorities, urging Congress to see that public resources go toward programs that will help the middle class, not large corporations. Obama’s proposals largely mirror those called for in the Oxfam report

Obama called for guaranteed sick-leave, free community college, tax cuts for middle-class families, more affordable child care, an increase in the minimum wage and renewed investments in infrastructure – all moves that would help people find and keep good jobs.

At the same time, Obama also called for closing tax loopholes engineered by lobbyists that only benefit corporations and the wealthy.

“Lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight. They’ve riddled it with giveaways the superrich don’t need, denying a break to middle class families who do,” he said. “Let’s close loopholes so we stop rewarding companies that keep profits abroad, and reward those that invest in America.”