🧵Key findings from @Oxfam on global #inequality:

🔹Since 2020, billionaire fortunes are up MASSIVELY while wealth of the bottom 60% has declined
🔹We're on track for 1st trillionaire within 10 yrs
🔹A new era of public action is needed to rein in billionaire & corporate power In our latest report, we look at how a new era of #corporate & #monopoly power is at the heart of extreme #inequality.

Billionaire #wealth & corporate power are intimately connected. Corporations are creating & sustaining a global #gilded age.

Last year we wrote to the Kenyan govt seeking a clear picture of public spending on private healthcare.

We finally heard back & what we learned exceeded my wildest expectations.

The data show skyrocketing spending on the private sector & withdrawal from the public system. 1/ Over the last decade, payouts by Kenya's social insurer—the NHIF—to the for-profit health sector rose more than 30-fold, vastly outstripping increases for public facilities.

In 2021, just 20% of NHIF spending went to public facilities.

Details: 2/chrgj.org/wp-content/upl…

Last week millions of people in Texas, the largest energy-producing state in the US, went days without power or heat during a brutal winter storm that killed at least 30 people. This avoidable catastrophe was the result of trusting the market to deliver the public good. 🧵👇 The Texas power system places near total trust in markets. In 1999, the state deregulated its electricity system to a patchwork of private companies. It relies on practically unaccountable and toothless regulatory agencies and voluntary guidelines. 2/11

How can we square decades of emphasis on 'poverty eradication' with skyrocketing inequality, widespread precarity and now rising global poverty? Covid-19 has merely lifted the lid off a pre-existing pandemic of poverty.

@PhilipGAlston in the @guardian: theguardian.com/global-develop… Some highlights*: Until just a few months ago, many were celebrating the imminent end of poverty; now it’s everywhere. How could the poverty narrative have turned on a dime? The explanation is simple. The success story was always highly misleading. 2/11

We've just released the final report by @Alston_UNSR, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme #poverty, on his visit to the #UK. The report is available here: undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Ad…. A few key takeaways: Some have asked me why a UN expert on #poverty would visit the #UK. Unfortunately, although the UK is the world’s 5th largest economy, 14 million are in poverty, child poverty is rising & predicted to reach 40% by 2021, homelessness is up 60%, and food bank use has skyrocketed.