Billionaire wealth surges to 'unimaginable' levels in 2024 as Oxfam predicts emergence of five trillionaires within a decade
Billionaire wealth surges to 'unimaginable' levels in 2024 as Oxfam predicts emergence of five trillionaires within a decade
Last year marked the second-largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records started, according to Oxfam.
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.
Bro! But capitalism uplifted the most amount of people out of poverty than any other system right? Right?
The fact that we even have billionaires (and they should not be a thing. The notion of a trillionaire is even more fucking atrocious) is probably why donvict and elon are assuming power right now.
Without the broligarchs and their thumb heavily on media, both "legacy" and not, do you think there would be so very many stupid people willing to vote for the convicted felon?
Say it with me: Billionaires should not exist.
Bullets don't care about your net worth
Drones are extremely cheap.
Shopping list for this year:
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AR-15
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Any 9mm pistol
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Semtex
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Military surplus gear
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Toyota Tacoma
Good luck on number 3
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When money is used in society as security for basic rights like a home, food and clean water, healthcare, political representation in government, then people hoarding wealth at the detriment of others are responsible and shouldn't be surprised when those same people they oppress become violent.
This is why they are shoveling so much money into loyal robots.
These are direct results of the government's failure to govern. The whole purpose of government is to regulate.
Billionaire wealth should have immediately been taxed at the highest historical levels. Now we're past the tipping point and have to simply endure living in an empire as it crumbles around us, while masses of rubes cheer their oppressors.
Thank Reagan for that
Well said.
'Now we’re past the tipping point and have to simply endure living in an empire as it crumbles around us, while masses of rubes cheer their oppressors.' - I can still vote and will do everything in my power to tax the s**t out of those billionairs. So help me the flying spaghetti monster.
I mean, there is a way to cure billionaires and prevent trillionaires. Several cures, actually, some of which are likely more palatable than others.
Mentally unwell hoarders
They should get therapy rite?
I can't remember where I heard this but apparently there are therapists for very rich people.
The therapist was on a podcast I think and discussing what they talk about.
Basically all rich people fear not having enough money. No matter how rich they get, they fear and obsess over not having enough money.
I thought it was interesting. These are people richer than God and they always want more.
They take that as "hoard more money yes yes"
this should be illegal
One billion should have been illegal.
Agreed
Jesus Christ, I'm getting hungry! When do we eat?
Time to call the plumber, I guess.
I've heard Mario's brother takes on... Social plumbing.
Simply famished
Absolutely obscene.
Every developed nation should tax these motherfuckers' entire assets at 99%. If they want to flee with all of their money to Honduras or Haiti or something, let them enjoy that paradise.
I mean, the issue is getting all nations to agree to that and making any agreement binding because otherwise the nation that decides to tax them at 98% gets all of the tax revenue...
98% of... what? Billionaires don't get a paycheck like working people. They're already sitting on all that wealth! If they spend money, it's buying something once like a football team or Twitter and waiting until the value goes up before selling it. Same thing with stocks. And those realized gains are taxed lower than payroll taxes. They even take out unneeded loans like Trump just to avoid paying taxes! There's a reason people say the rich pay less taxes than us...
They couldn’t flee with everything, most of their assets are things we pay to use every day.
We lost more valuable stuff leaving them in charge: manufacturing capacity.
Capital flight is perfect, they can't take the means of production with them. It's an empty threat.
They've taken more away just being allowed to stay here. Let them flee, just means less time needed sharpening the guillotine blades when we're fed up.
and yet, no one will stop using their services.
They have so much money, the services aren't even where they make most of it anymore. Trading and investing are.
only way I see an option to not is to live similar to Amish lifestyles in the US, but even then, I assume AWS, Meta and Alphabet can make some money off their existence through satellites and IP cameras
I don't disagree with you and not arguing not to be aware of individual actions. it just seems the situation is more dire than just not giving them our money or data
Unfortunately I don't have a viable alternative for some goods from Amazon without a good price increase because local sellers up the price on top of the import fees.
On the bright side, I don't shop there often and it's mostly limited to electronics.
Your local sellers are probably buying from Amazon and marking up, then.
No shit, fuckin obviously. This is how money works. The point is not the number it is the proportion (though obv they're related)
BE Luigi.
See Luigi
I just wanna say that Zimbabwe had trillionaires before it was cool.
Resources to be extracted for the public good.
Compounding interests. I don't think that most people realise how powerful the effect of it is. Anyone can take advantage of it but there's no getting around the fact that the more money you have the easier it gets to make even more which then makes it even easier and this just keeps accelerating.
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.
Billionaire wealth surges to 'unimaginable' levels in 2024 as Oxfam predicts emergence of five trillionaires within a decade
It's less impressive when you realize that much, if not most, of that wealth isn't "real." The vast majority of that wealth is in corporate stock, and the value of the stock is based on a lot of speculation. How much of that trillions of dollars in corporate stock will ever be converted to cash? Who knows, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being only a small portion, and well less than a trillion dollars.
I get your point, but it is impressive (or depressive, let's call it}.
It doesn't matter whether it's imaginary numbers in stock or imaginary numbers in a bank account. Just as stock values change, so do liquid asset values, with inflation and macroeconomic effects.
Either way, the numbers represent the proportional value of current human society that has been captured by an individual. Billionaires have captured and withdrawn thousands, ten thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives' worth of value just for themselves. Whether that value is held in stocks or cash is immaterial.
Yes, even if the numbers are at least partly fictitious (or even mostly), it is still true that a very large percentage of real wealth is owned and controlled by a relatively small number of people. The way we understand and measure value needs to change, because it is very skewed and not based in reality (our current system is apparently operating on the premise that we can create a seemingly infinite amount of value, but that's not physically possible on a planet with finite resources), but the wealth that has "real" value is very unequally distributed and that needs to change, as well.
Well part of what they're saying is that a dollar is only a dollar if it's liquid.
And if, for example, Musk were to cash out all his stock positions, many of them would be worth vastly less by the time the transaction was done. Not only that, but without those positions, many other wealthy individuals would see their positions suffer and their wealth evaporate.
It is still an obscene amount of monopoly bucks though.
No man is an island, just the GDP of most
They have lots of islands
That shit was unimaginable even before 2024.
Oxfam can keep calling whatever they like. So long as wealthy people exist, they've got control of lobbying to prevent such things from happening.
The nice thing with having a list of billionaires - and trillionaires - is that you have a list to go through when the day of reckoning comes, after the American Reich falls.
So like in 100 years? Well I guess that will be nice.
A generation terrified of Big Brother let the Landsraad and CHOAM set up shop in the back
Let's go Bezos!! We finna hit that big 1 trill real soon
