Last year brought another 204 new billionaires, and the wealth of the world's richest people increased by two trillion dollars, according to a report by Oxfam. At the same time, 733 million people do not have enough food
Before the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, organization Oxfam announced that 204 new ones appeared in the world last year billionaire.
Oxfam stated that the wealth of the super-rich is also growing: their total wealth increased from 13 trillion US dollars to 15 trillion in one year.
In contrast, 733 million people do not have enough food – that's about 152 million more hungry than five years ago.
According to Oxfam, there are currently 2.769 billionaires in the world. Their total assets, the study stated, grew three times faster in 2024 than in the previous year.
The wealth of the ten richest billionaires grew by an average of 100 million dollars per day.
In contrast, the number of people living below the World Bank's extended poverty line of $6,85 a day has stagnated since 1990 at nearly 3,6 billion, the study said. Oxfam.
The growing gap threatens democratic societies
According to the authors of the study, the rich are the big winners of the crisis years. From the point of view of this humanitarian organization, the growing gap has consequences for the global community, but also for national societies.
Because the super-rich made sure that unjust structures remained stable.
"Economically strong countries in the Global North continue to set rules that benefit the super-rich and their corporations," the report said. This, the study says, is still a consequence of colonialism.
Executive Director of the German Oxfam, Serap Altinišik, warns of negative consequences for democracies:
"Because wealth goes hand in hand with political power." We see that today at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, a billionaire president supported by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk."
Altinišik criticizes: "The growth of the wealth of the super-rich is unlimited, while there is hardly any progress in the fight against poverty."
American tech entrepreneurs at the helm
The report is based on data from "Forbes" magazine. "Even if they lost 99 percent of their wealth overnight, they would still be billionaires," the aid and development organization said.
The so-called Forbes list also includes the American technology entrepreneur Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft) and Larry Page (Gouges). The richest German is Hamburg logistics entrepreneur Klaus-Michael Kine.
The super-rich are also believed to have increasing influence over tax legislation. For example, in the reduction of corporate tax, inadequate taxation of capital gains, exemption from inheritance tax and abolition of wealth tax.
"Between 1990 and 2017, the number of countries with a value added tax tripled from 50 to more than 150, while the number of countries with a net wealth tax fell from twelve to four," the study said. Oxfam.
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