Millions of people are being forced deeper into poverty as the ultra-rich increase their wealth.
As global elites gather this week in the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum, our global context couldn’t be more alarming. Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023, while it could take over a century to end poverty at current rates.
People in the U.S. and around the world are struggling to pay the high costs of food, gas, and other necessities, yet in 2024, total billionaire wealth increased by $2 trillion, with 204 new billionaires created. How is this possible?
Our new report, “Takers not Makers,” delves into the concerning increase in billionaire wealth, and how this increase is pushing more people further into poverty.
In short, billionaires are bad for the economy. How bad? Check out these top five ways:
1. Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned
About 60 percent of billionaire wealth comes from one of three sources: inheritance, cronyism and corruption, or monopoly power. Trillions are being gifted in inheritance in particular, creating a new aristocratic oligarchy that has immense power in our politics and our economy.
Our deeply unequal world has a long history of colonial domination, which has largely benefited the richest people. The poorest, racialized people, as well as women and marginalized groups have and continue to be systematically exploited at huge human cost.
2. Monopoly power is escalating extreme wealth and inequality worldwide.
We call them monopoly men—billionaires that lead corporations that largely control markets, set the rules and terms of exchange with other companies and workers, and set higher prices without losing business.
As monopolies have tightened their stranglehold on industries, billionaires have seen their wealth skyrocket to unprecedented levels. We calculate that 18 percent of the world’s billionaire’ wealth is from monopoly power.
You don’t have to look far for billionaires who have amassed wealth from huge corporate power:
For example:
- Jeff Bezos built the Amazon ‘empire’. Amazon accounts for 80% or more of online purchases in Germany, France, the UK and Spain.
- Aliko Dangote is Africa’s richest person and holds a ‘near-monopoly’ on cement in Nigeria and market power across the African continent.
3. Inheritance transfers of wealth aren’t taxed, depriving governments of critical resources to fund schools, health care, and housing.
In 2023–for the first time–more new billionaires got rich through inheritance than through entrepreneurship. All of the world’s billionaires younger than 30 inherited their wealth. The next three decades will see over 1,000 of today’s billionaires transfer more than $5.2 trillion to their heirs. Oxfam calculates that 36 percent of billionaire wealth is derived from inheritance.
Worse still, this transfer will be largely untaxed. Oxfam’s analysis shows that two-thirds of countries don’t tax inheritance to direct descendants at all. Half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on the money they will give to their children when they die.
The idea that extreme wealth is a reward for extreme talent is pervasive and strongly reinforced in our media and popular culture. But this perception is not rooted in reality.
4. In the U.S. we are inaugurating a president of and for billionaires
We’re seeing this global billionaire power manifest in the inauguration of billionaire President Trump, backed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Trump wants to use his power over the world’s largest economy to slash taxes for the ultra-rich and mega-corporations, at the expense of the rest of us.
5. Billionaires are contributing a million times more carbon to the atmosphere than the average person.
People across the globe are facing dangerous climate change events, such as severe hurricanes, flash floods, and wildfires because billionaires are making climate change rapidly worse. In fact, 125 of the world’s richest billionaires invest so much money in polluting industries that they are responsible for emitting an average of 3 million carbon tons a year. The more they invest in fossil fuels, the more they protect the use of them, no matter how much the rest of the world suffers in response.
The rising levels of global inequality are unacceptable: clearly, it's time for more billionaire-busting policies. Oxfam is demanding wide-ranging increases in taxation of the super-rich, and we call on world governments to tax multi-millionaires and billionaires.