Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest one percent, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor. It found that 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017, while 82 percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population.

The development charity Oxfam has called for action to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor as it launched a new report showing that 42 people hold as much wealth as the 3.7 billion who make up the poorest half of the world’s population.

Americans reflexively link hard work with reward, but what happens as the two become ever more disconnected?

Not in our backyard. That's what dozens of people said at a packed meeting Thursday night about the city's plan to put a homeless shelter smack in the middle of their wealthy neighborhood.

Bill Gates says he has paid more than $10 billion in taxes over a lifetime but billionaires like him should pay "significantly" more because they benefit more from the system. The Microsoft co-founder, the world's second richest man after Amazon's Jeff Bezos, was critical of a recent US tax overhaul that slashed corporate taxes and lowered the top bracket for individual income.

A Silicon Valley billionaire who was ordered by California courts to restore public access to a popular surfing beach is seeking to take his case to the US supreme court. The case could entirely upend public access to beaches in a state with more than 1,000 miles of shoreline.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has become the first person to amass a fortune surpassing $100 billion in Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s moguls. The milestone announced Tuesday underscores the growing clout of Bezos and the company he founded in 1994 as an online bookstore. These days, Amazon sells almost everything imaginable online. It’s now trying help people manage their lives with its digital assistant Alexa, which is implanted in its Echo line of internet-connected speakers.

A Russian billionaire has been ordered by a court in London to hand over a £350 million pound (US$500 million) superyacht to his wife as part of Britain’s biggest-ever divorce battle. Justice Charles Haddon-Cave at the High Court ruled that Farkad Akhmedov, 62, had used evasive and underhanded tactics to keep the yacht beyond the reach of the English courts and avoid paying his wife, Tatiana Akhmedova, 41.

Canada’s richest 87 families have roughly the same amount of wealth as that held by 12 million of their compatriots, or about a third of the country’s population, according to a new report. The report, published on Tuesday by the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, found that in 2016 the net worth of the richest was 4,448 times that of the average Canadian.

“Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful. “Change the world. Improve lives. Invent something new,” McKinsey & Company’s recruiting materials say. “Sit back, relax, and change the world,” tweets the World Economic Forum, host of the Davos conference. “Let’s raise the capital that builds the things that change the world,” a Morgan Stanley ad says. Walmart, recruiting a software engineer, seeks an “eagerness to change the world.” Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

New York is no longer the city with the biggest super-rich population. Hong Kong overtook the Big Apple to become the top destination for the planet's wealthiest people last year, according to a study published Thursday by research firm Wealth-X. The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs) residing in the Asian financial hub rose by almost a third in 2017 to 10,000, the study said.

The true story of how the City of London invented offshore banking – and set the rich free

The bottom line is that there has been very little increase in private sector compensation or W-2 wages since the end of 2017.. One of the leading arguments for the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has been that it will raise the wages of rank-and-file workers, with congressional Republicans and members of the Trump administration promising raises of many thousands of dollars within ten years. The Trump administration’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers argued in April that we are already seeing the positive wage impact of the tax cuts:

More than 80 of the country's wealthiest people are paying the same or less income tax as the average worker, a shocking report has revealed. Ten years on from the economic crash, a combination of clever accounting and loopholes is allowing some of the country's richest individuals to minimise their contribution to the State's coffers. The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) reviewed how 480 people, classified as 'High Wealth Individuals' (HWI), interact with the Revenue Commissioners.

The 1% has never had it so good. The average wage for the 1% of income earners hit $719,000 per year in 2017, up 3.7% on the year, exceeding their peak of $716,000 per year just before the Great Recession, according to a report released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive, nonprofit think tank, citing data from the Social Security Administration. The average wage for the top 0.1% reached $2.7 million in 2017, the second-highest level ever, just 4% below their level in 2007.

At least 44 people have been killed in California a result of the wildfires that have burned more than 100,000 acres of land in the state. The most vulnerable populations, including the elderly and people with disabilities, are at the highest risk of perishing in the fires, which were made more likely by climate change that exacerbated dryness and tinder availability in fire-prone areas.

An eight-year campaign to slash the IRS’s budget has left the agency understaffed, hamstrung, and operating with archaic equipment. The result: a hundred-billion-dollar heist. In the summer of 2008, William Pfeil made a startling discovery: Hundreds of foreign companies that operated in the U.S. weren’t paying U.S. taxes, and his employer, the Internal Revenue Service, had no idea. Under U.S. law, companies that do business in the Gulf of Mexico owe the American government a piece of what they make drilling for oil there or helping those that do.

Dmitry Rybolovlev has followed through with his plans of demolishing a massive Palm Beach mansion previously owned by Donald Trump. Rybolovlev purchased the 6.26 acre estate in 2008 for a record breaking $95,000,000. His plans changed with the discovery of mold, making the oceanfront home one of the nation’s most expensive tear downs. Donald Trump purchased the property in 2004 from Abe Gosman for $41,400,000.

When Ronald Reagan took office, affluent Americans paid a 70 percent tax rate on all income above $216,000. In the decades since, our country’s highest earners have seen their annual pay skyrocket, while the median household’s has barely budged. As a result, America’s 160,000 richest families now lay claim to 90 percent of its wealth. Studies suggest that this kind of inequality erodes social trust, abets plutocracy, and depresses economic growth. Politicians from both major parties routinely suggest that they see inequality as a major problem.

The world's billionaires are growing $2.5 billion richer every day, while the poorest half of the global population is seeing its net worth dwindle. Billionaires, who now number a record 2,208, have more wealth than ever before, according to an Oxfam International report published Monday. Since the global financial crisis a decade ago, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled.