Demonstrators make signs with their arms in front of Kenyan police officers during a demonstration against tax hikes as Members of the Parliament debate the Finance Bill 2024 in downtown Nairobi, on June 18, 2024. The police fired tear gas and arrested dozens of demonstrators. (Photo: Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images)
The choice - oligarchy or democracy?
Billionaire fortunes have grown at a rate three times faster than the previous five years since the election of Donald Trump in November 2024. While US billionaires have seen the sharpest growth in their fortunes, billionaires in the rest of the world have also seen double digit increases.
The number of billionaires has surpassed 3,000 for the first time, and the level of billionaire wealth is now higher than at any time in history. Meanwhile, one in four people globally face hunger.
It is one thing for a billionaire to buy an enormous yacht or many luxury homes around the world, but in a deeply unequal world where the majority of people have very little, and our planet is suffocating from relentless carbon emissions and waste, this excessive consumption can rightly be criticized. But many would reject this criticism, describing it as the politics of envy.
Yet far fewer people would disagree that when a billionaire uses their wealth to buy a politician, to influence a government, to own a newspaper or a social media platform, or to out-lawyer any opposition to ensure they are above the law, that these actions undermine progress and fairness. Such power gives billionaires control over all our futures, undermining political freedom and the rights of the rest of us.
This phenomenon of the richest influencing and controlling politics is not new; it is familiar in countries in every part of the world.
Oxfam’s report is how governments worldwide are making the wrong choice; they are choosing to defend wealth, not freedom. Choosing to allow the rich to rule, while suppressing every day peoples’ voice, choice and power over their own lives. Choosing to repress people’s anger at how life is becoming unaffordable and unbearable, rather than redistributing wealth from the richest to the rest of us, so everyone can have what they need.
Life is becoming unaffordable for everyday people everywhere
In previous decades, defenders of the global economy could point to very real evidence that poverty was reducing. Yet, in the decade since 2020, poverty reduction has largely ground to a halt, with poverty rising again in Africa. In 2022, nearly half of the world’s population (48%), or 3.83 billion people, lived in poverty.
Building a more equal future
The world has reached a critical juncture. Extreme inequality has reached the point where the super-rich can rig elections and economies, and deepen their power through politics, the media and institutions of justice. Meanwhile, billions of people face avoidable hardship and the erosion of their civil and political rights, and dissent and protest are crushed by governments the world over.
