Motion S5M-10091: Reward Work, Not Wealth

25 Jan 2018

That the Parliament welcomes the Oxfam report, Reward Work, not Wealth, which finds that the world’s richest 1% own 82% of global wealth; understands that, according to the report, half of the world’s population received no share of all the wealth created globally, while billionaires have grown their wealth by $762 billion, which is enough to end “global extreme poverty seven times over”; believes that 2017 saw the largest growth in the number of billionaires in history with a new billionaire joining the ranks every two days, bringing the number worldwide to 2,043, 90% of whom are men; notes that Oxfam highlight a general trend of suppression of freedom of speech in many of the countries in which they work, with CIVICUS, an alliance dedicated to strengthening citizens, finding that there are now serious threats to civic freedoms in more than 100 countries; agrees with the words of the former US Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, who said “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”; highlights the danger that it considers rampant inequality presents to people’s way of life; welcomes the recommendations in the report that focus on tackling extreme wealth through the use of mechanisms such as pay ratios, redistribution and eradicating the use of tax havens; deplores the scale of inequality revealed by this report, and calls on the Scottish Government and UK Government to use the powers available to them to meet the recommendations and tackle rampant income inequality.