Last Sunday, a group of millionaires joined activists in Davos to protest the annual gathering of business and political elites organized by the World Economic Forum. The group demanded that governments start taxing the rich to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
The group, which calls itself the “Patriotic Millionaires,” issued a plea to world leaders attending the annual conference to make the wealthy pay more tax to address the “cost of living scandal playing out in multiple nations around the world,” reported The Guardian.
Charity group Oxfam recently warned that 263 million more people will fall into extreme poverty in 2022, as a result of the cost of living rising faster than it has in decades — that’s one million people every 33 hours. In contrast, the pandemic has been creating a billionaire every 30 hours.
“While the rest of the world is collapsing under the weight of an economic crisis, billionaires and world leaders meet in this private compound to discuss turning points in history,” said Phil White, a former business consultant and member of Patriotic Millionaires. “It’s outrageous that our political leaders listen to those who have the most, know the least about the economic impact of this crisis, and many of whom pay infamously little in taxes. The only credible outcome from this conference is to tax the richest and tax us now. Tax the delegates attending Davos 2022.”
Marlene Engelhorn, another millionaire who joined the protest, said that the only way to tackle the rapidly widening inequality gap is to demand that governments “tax me, tax the rich.”
“As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of wealth my whole life, I know how skewed our economy is and I cannot continue to sit back and wait for someone, somewhere, to do something. I feel there is no option left for us other than to take action,” said Engelhorn, who co-founded the #taxmenow initiative.