Jan. 20 (UPI) — Billionaire wealth surged last year, with the world’s richest individuals adding $2 trillion to their pockets in 2024, according to a new report released Monday to coincide with world leaders converging on Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum.
The World Economic Forum, also known as the Davos Forum for the city where it is held, kicked off Monday under the theme “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” where political, business, academic and civil society leaders will gather to discuss global issues, such as inequality.
As it does ahead of each Davos Forum, the Britain-based non-governmental organization Oxfam International released its annual report on the worsening state of global inequality.
Titled Takers Not Makers, Oxfam’s report, states that billionaire wealth grew by a combined $5.7 billion per day last year, while poverty has barely changed since the 1990s.
Last year also saw the number of billionaires rise from 2,565 in 2023 to 2,769, with their combined wealth surging from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in the 12-month period. According to the report, this represents the second-largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began.
The surge has prompted Oxfam, which last year predicted the world’s first trillionaire would emerge within a decade, to now state it expects to see at least five trillionaires in the same time frame.
“The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable,” Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar said in a statement.
“The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be-trillionaires.”
The report was published not only at the start of Davos but also ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States on Monday. In his farewell address, outgoing President Joe Biden warned of the growing threat posed by the unchecked power of the extremely wealthy.
In doing so, Biden alluded to Trump and those in his inner circle, in particular the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Biden warned that there was “an oligarchy” of extreme wealth, power and influence taking shape in the United States.
Mirroring that sentiment, the report from Oxfam references Trump and his November election win as having given “a huge further boost to billionaire fortunes, while his policies are set to fan the flames of inequality further.”
It continues by stating there is “a new aristocratic oligarchy” wielding immense power in politics and the economy.
The report states that 60% of billionaire wealth comes from either inheritance, cronyism, corruption or monopoly power. If left unchecked, the world will see the “biggest transfer of the largest generational wealth in human history.”
“The crown jewel of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, running the world’s largest economy,” Behar said.
“We present this report as a stark wake-up call that ordinary people the world over are being crushed by the wealth of a tiny few.”
To right the situation, Oxfam is calling for governments to ensure that the incomes of the top 10% of their citizenry are no higher than the bottom 40%. Additionally, it urges the world’s richest and their companies pay to their fair share in taxes.
Oxfam is also calling for the abolishment of tax havens and for governments to end the exodus of wealth from the southern half of the world to the north by breaking up monopolies, democratizing patent rules and regulating corporations.
Former colonial powers, it said, must also offer formal apologies and provide reparations to those they have harmed.
