The world could have its first trillionaire within a decade, anti-poverty organization Oxfam International said Monday in its annual assessment of global inequalities timed to the 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.
I truly barely have the words for how utterly destructive, immoral and unethical billionaires oligarchs already are. These people profit from the crises and human and environmental catastrophes they sponsor. They are pure evil and have no place in a globalised society in as much turmoil as ours. Yet we continue to allow them to accumulate wealth and destroy our lives. Cool.