Battling the billionaires

Billionaires are destroying the planet and exploiting its people - it's time to end extreme wealth.

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We are living through the most extreme concentration of wealth in human history. Last week, Oxfam released new data showing the world’s 3,000 billionaires saw their wealth increase by $6.5 trillion in real terms over the past decade. That’s nearly 15% of the entire world economy’s output over that time period. The richest 1% of the world’s population has gained $34 trillion in real terms. Oxfam calculates that this figure would be enough to end annual global poverty 22 times over.

This extreme wealth is not the result of billionaires’ unique genius, innovation, or hard work. Oxfam’s report Takers, Not Makers shows beyond doubt that today’s billionaire class owes its fortunes not to merit but to inherited wealth, monopoly power, and political cronyism. And at the heart of this story lies colonialism: a system of violent extraction that continues to shape our world.

Credit: Oxfam https://uganda.oxfam.org/latest/publications/takers-not-makers