How are billionaire and corporate power intensifying global inequality?

This week marks the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—an annual gathering where politicians, billionaires, and business leaders come together to supposedly “improve the state of the world.” However, the big players in Davos are often the very same people driving inequality, looking after their own interests rather than the public good. If they actually seek to better the world, they must start by taking a hard look at unchecked billionaire and corporate power and take steps to rein in wealth and income inequality.

Oxfam’s new report, “Takers, Not Makers,” explores how extreme wealth is not accumulated simply as a reward for extreme talent.  The majority of billionaire wealth—an estimated 60 percent of it—is unearned, derived from inheritance, crony connections, and monopoly power. In fact, every billionaire under 30 has inherited their wealth, and for the first time ever, more new billionaires got rich in 2023 through inheritance than entrepreneurship. This report underlines what research by Oxfam and so many others suggested: that the ultra-rich few are largely taking, rather than making wealth, while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet.

6 way billionaire and corporate power is making inequality worse

1. Billionaire wealth is growing at an unimaginable pace

In 2024, the world’s billionaires got $2 trillion richer, growing their wealth by roughly $5.7 billion a day. Their fortunes increased three times faster than in 2023, with nearly four new billionaires minted every week. At current rates, the world will see five trillionaires within the next decade. Meanwhile, the number of people experiencing poverty remains pretty much unchanged from 1990.

2. Corporate power increases racial and gender inequality

Corporate power exploits and magnifies racial and gender inequalities. One such way is through privatization, which drives and reinforces inequalities, particularly along racial, class, caste, and gender lines. Privatization commodifies and segregates access to essential services, like healthcare and education, both excluding and impoverishing those who cannot pay.

Corporate power also propels climate breakdown, which further exacerbates inequalities, putting an undue burden on Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, and lower-income people. Many of the world’s billionaires own, control, shape and financially profit from processes that generate carbon pollution. They benefit when corporations block progress on a fast and just transition to renewable energy while the people in low-income countries who produce the least climate pollution suffer the greatest the consequences.

3. Corporations are generating income inequality

Corporations so often use their influence to oppose labor laws and policies that benefit workers, for example by fighting minimum wage increases, while pushing for political restrictions on unionization and even supporting rollbacks to child labor laws. Research shows that only 0.4 percent of the world’s largest corporations are publicly committed to paying workers a living wage and support a living wage in their value chains.

4. Corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes

Oxfam’s past research has shown how a "war on taxation" by corporations has seen the effective corporate tax rate (the rate at which pre-tax profits are actually taxed) fall by roughly a third in recent decades, with many mega companies paying next to nothing in taxes. During the same period, many corporations made record profits. This tax-dodging costs society. To compensate for the loss of tax revenue from corporations and their rich owners, governments have cut public services and increasingly relied on regressive taxes on goods and services, which fall disproportionately on low-income households.

5. Monopolies are giving an elite few massive power

Monopoly power is escalating extreme wealth and inequality worldwide; in fact, Oxfam estimates that 18 percent of the world’s billionaire’ wealth comes from monopoly sources.  Monopolistic corporations can control markets, set the rules and terms of exchange with other companies and workers, and set higher prices without losing business. These monopolies have a huge role in shaping the lives of ordinary people around the world, from influencing how much we are paid, to the foods we eat and can afford, and the medicines we can access.

Monopolistic corporations can control markets, set the rules and terms of exchange with other companies and workers, and set higher prices without losing business.

6. Our economic system has created a new type of colonialism

Many of the world’s super-rich are concentrated in countries that were once colonial superpowers. The East India Company is an early example of a multinational corporation. These companies operate in such a way that they are exploiting workers in the Global South on behalf of rich shareholders primarily based in the Global North. Global supply chains and export processing industries represent modern colonial systems of wealth extraction. Workers in these supply chains, particularly women, frequently experience poor working conditions, a lack of collective bargaining rights, and minimal social protection.

A more equal world is possible, but only if governments take action

We are at an inflection point. Oxfam predicts the world could have not just one, but its five trillionaires in a decade. Meanwhile, poverty has remained virtually unchanged since 1990. At current rates, it will take more than a century to end poverty. Reducing inequality would end poverty three times faster.

We must bring an end to our current extractive economic model and build a new blueprint for our economies to ensure we are creating pathways to a truly equal future for everyone. We need our governments to make concrete plans and commitments to reduce inequality.

So how do we reduce the gap between the super-rich and the rest of society?

t’s time for governments to rein in billionaire and corporate power. This means ensuring corporations and the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes, breaking up monopolies, empowering workers by supporting living wages, unionization, and paid sick and family leave, and embracing public services. Here in the U.S., we demand that Congress address the inequality crisis by making ultra-rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes, so we can invest in areas that benefit everyone, such as education, health care, and clean energy.