CNN
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Overtake the billionaires. The first trillionaires are on the way.
According to Oxfam’s annual inequality report, released on Sunday, five people are expected to amass at least $1 trillion in wealth over the next decade, if current trends continue. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, currently the richest person in the world with over $430 billion, is expected to hit the milestone in just under five years.
He will soon be joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and family.
The Oxfam report, which draws on data compiled by Forbes, coincides with the start of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, an elite gathering of some of the richest people and world leaders. Its release also comes the day before the inauguration of billionaire President-elect Donald Trump.
2024 has been a very lucrative year for the world’s richest individuals and families, fueled in part by the surge in the US stock market, Oxfam has found. Their net worth has grown so quickly that Oxfam revised its estimate last year that only one billionaire would be crowned in the next decade.
“It’s an unimaginable amount,” Rebecca Riddell, senior policy manager at Oxfam America, said of $1 trillion. “There is nothing to celebrate about this extreme inequality. »
Last year, the ranks of the billionaire class grew by just over 200 people, to nearly 2,770 people. Their wealth soared by $2.1 trillion – three times faster than the previous year – to a total of $15 trillion. In the United States alone, where 816 billionaires reside, the net worth of this group has soared by $1.4 trillion.
What’s more, if one of the ten richest men lost 99% of their wealth, they would still be a billionaire, Oxfam has found.
Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty is about the same as in 1990, according to the report citing World Bank data.
This year’s Oxfam report, Takers not Makers, also highlights that more than a third of billionaires’ wealth comes from inheritance. In 2023, for the first time, more billionaires have accumulated their wealth through inheritance rather than entrepreneurship. In addition, the 17 billionaires under the age of 30 have had their fortune transferred to them.
This transfer of assets is made easier by the fact that two-thirds of countries do not tax the estates of direct descendants, Riddell said. And in the United States, the estate tax has been reduced to nothing through tax cuts and strategies to avoid it.
“Unchecked, we are about to witness the greatest transfer of generational wealth in human history – barely earned and barely taxed, unless we act,” she said. said, adding that Oxfam is calling on governments to ensure the rich and corporations pay their taxes. a fair share of taxes.
The wealthy are also exerting more and more influence over politics. According to Oxfam, the new Trump administration is a good example of this. It is home to nearly a dozen people worth at least $1 billion, alone or with their spouses, making it one of the richest in history.
Musk, who has pumped more than $260 million into Trump’s 2024 campaign, is a top adviser to the president-elect and co-heads what’s known as the Department of Government Effectiveness.
“Musk and the immense influence he wields over politics and policy are truly emblematic of the unchecked billionaire power that has come to define our economic and political system,” Riddell said.
In his farewell address from the Oval Office last week, President Joe Biden warned of the concentration of power among “a very small number of ultra-wealthy people.”
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our fundamental rights and freedoms and the opportunity for everyone to progress,” he said. he declared.