LONDON—Food companies making big profits as inflation has surged should face windfall taxes to help cut global inequality, anti-poverty group Oxfam said Monday as the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting gets underway.
Over the past two years, the world’s super-rich 1 percent have gained nearly twice as much wealth as the remaining 99 percent combined, Oxfam said. Meanwhile, at least 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing their wage growth, even as billionaire fortunes are rising by $2.7 billion a day.
Oxfam wants the idea to go further to include big food corporations, as a way to narrow the widening gap between the rich and poor. Oxfam’s report said wealthy corporations are using the war as an excuse to pass on even bigger price hikes. Food and energy are among the industries dominated by a small number of players that have effective oligopolies, and the lack of competition allows them to keep prices high, the group said.