Summary
Oxfam’s 2024 inequality report revealed a record $2 trillion increase in billionaire wealth, reaching $15 trillion, while global poverty rates remain stagnant.
The top 1% own 45% of all wealth, and 44% of people live on less than $6.85 daily.
Oxfam predicts five trillionaires within a decade, citing inheritance and cronyism as key wealth drivers. Elon Musk may become the first trillionaire by 2027.
Oxfam calls for tax reform, monopoly regulation, and income redistribution to address inequality.
Critics warn unchecked wealth concentration threatens democracy and economic fairness.
The effect is kinda broken though.
The old idea is that investment enables the unwealthy to use capital to be productive, and the wealthy to take on their risk. This is… fine. It still happens, and that’s great.
But past a certain point, there’s basically no risk for the wealthy, as illustrated how boards make boneheaded, abusive decisions every day yet still compound their wealth, often handing “the bag” of their failure out to the public and getting away with millions and a new gig. Startups hope to get bought out by megacorps instead of actually being sustainably productive, and the megacorps don’t care because they’re still stupendously rich when their boneheaded buyout fails, and it squelches competition.
Near trillionaires should not get the benefits of compounding interest. Their incentives are horrendously misaligned and broken, and it’s basically cheating the system.
What’s more, no one should be opposed to this. Socialist, free market libertarian, far right/MAGA, any flavor of communist, neoliberal, whatever, logically all of humanity should agree mega billionaires are bad for everyone and should be taxed to shit. The only exceptions are crypto bros, con artists, fraudulent day traders, (why would lose the systems that enable their pump and dump schemes), and… billionaires.