Billionaire wealth surged to previously “unimaginable” heights in 2024, leading experts to predict that at least five people will become trillionaires within a decade, according to a new report from Oxfam International. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is expected to hit the $1,000,000,0000,000 milestone even earlier, by 2027.
The combined wealth of the world’s richest people surged from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in 2024 alone, with 60 percent of that wealth now thanks to inheritance, monopolies, or “crony connections,” according to Oxfam.
Musk is already worth about $440 billion, a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of Denmark.
“The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated—by three times—but so too has their power,” Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar said.
At the same time, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. The richest 1 percent own nearly 45 percent of all wealth, while 44 percent of the world lives in poverty. This extreme inequality is “not just bad for the economy—it’s bad for humanity,” Behar said. Governments should commit to ensuring the incomes of the top 10 percent do not exceed those of the bottom 40 percent worldwide, according to Oxfam. Read more at NBC News.
I’d love to see the Kiddush he gives when that happens.
And why should I care if he’s not sharing it with me?
Prior performance is no guarantee of future results.
This last sentence is pathetic.
“ Governments should commit to ensuring the incomes of the top 10 percent do not exceed those of the bottom 40 percent worldwide,”
Does Oxfam want to tax their wealth to give to the poor, or simply take away their businesses / investments so they earn less? And if so, how exactly would that benefit the poor of the world?
I probably need to read the full article at NBC, but don’t think my opinion or facts about Socialism’s “success” will change.
The funny thing is they’re saying the SAME percentage (or maybe lower, 44% barely changed since 1990) are poor, so obviously the rising wealth of billionaires has not impacted the finances of the rest of the world population negatively.
In Yiddish we call it “imfarginners”.