It is only going to get worse.
Billionaire row at the Trump inauguration.
As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk were among the billionaires partying at Trump's inauguration today in Washington -- with Musk so overwhelmed with joy that he did not one, but two Hitler salutes during a speech after the event -- Oxfam released a report today that found that billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. An average of nearly four new billionaires were minted every week.
Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.
Oxfam states: "In 2024, the number of billionaires rose to 2,769, up from 2,565 in 2023. Their combined wealth surged from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months. This is the second largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began. The wealth of the world’s ten richest men grew on average by almost $100 million a day —even if they lost 99 percent of their wealth overnight, they would remain billionaires."
They also note that the "report also shines a light on how, contrary to popular perception, billionaire wealth is largely unearned —60 percent of billionaire wealth now comes from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections. Unmerited wealth and colonialism —understood as not only a history of brutal wealth extraction but also a powerful force behind today’s extreme levels of inequality— stand as two major drivers of billionaire wealth accumulation."
In addition:
Many of the super-rich, particularly in Europe, owe part of their wealth to historical colonialism and the exploitation of poorer countries. For example, the fortune of billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who has put his sprawling media ‘empire’ at the service of France's nationalist right, was built partly from colonial activities in Africa.
This dynamic of wealth extraction persists today: vast sums of money still flow from the Global South to countries in the Global North and their richest citizens, in what Oxfam’s report describes as modern-day colonialism.
But today was another great day for billionaires as one of their own takes office in the US promising to cut their pathetically low taxes and any regulations even more.
“Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos know a thing or two about screwing over workers. It's no wonder they're sitting ringside for the inauguration of a man who's built a career out of cheating workers, ripping off families, and skipping out on paying taxes," Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement Monday, characterizing the mega-rich attendees as "billionaires' row."
"The billionaires in attendance today have one goal: to get even richer by gutting our health care, public education, and Social Security," Mitchell added.
Similarly, Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar said: “The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable. 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.
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. We present this report as a stark wake up-call that ordinary people the world over are being crushed by the enormous wealth of a tiny few,”
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