World could get its first trillionaire within 10 years, antipoverty group says
DAVOS, Switzerland – The world could have its first trillionaire within a decade, anti-poverty organization Oxfam International said in its annual assessment of global inequalities timed to the recent gathering of political and business elites at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
Oxfam, which for years has been trying to highlight the growing disparities between the super-rich and the bulk of the global population during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, reckons the gap has been “supercharged” since the coronavirus pandemic.
The group said the fortunes of the five richest men – Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family of luxury company LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investment guru Warren Buffett – have spiked by 114% in real terms since 2020, when the world was reeling from the pandemic.
Oxfam’s interim executive director said the report showed that the world is entering a “decade of division.”
“We have the top five billionaires, they have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost 5 billion people have become poorer,” Amitabh Behar said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, where the forum’s annual meeting took place last week.
“Very soon, Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire within a decade,” Behar said, referring to a person who has a thousand billion dollars. “Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years.”
If someone does reach that trillion-dollar milestone – and it could be someone not even on any list of richest people right now – he or she would have the same value as oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil fame is widely considered to have become the world’s first billionaire in 1916.
Currently, Musk is the richest man on the planet, with a personal fortune of just under $250 billion, according to Oxfam, which used figures from Forbes.
By contrast, the organization said nearly 5 billion people have been made poorer since the pandemic, with many of the world’s developing nations unable to provide the financial support that richer nations could during lockdowns.
In addition, Oxfam said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent energy and food costs soaring, disproportionately hit the poorest nations.
With Brazil hosting this year’s Group of 20 summit of leading industrial and developing nations, it was a “good time for Oxfam to raise awareness” about inequalities, said Max Lawson, Oxfam’s head of inequality policy.