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The world could have its first trillionaire within 10 years if current inequality trends continue, antipoverty group Oxfam International said in a report published Monday, reflecting the increasing gap between the world’s wealthy and poor.
The report, titled “Inequality Inc.,” was released the same day as the start of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Its authors say the world is living through a “decade of division,” pointing out that since 2019, the world’s five wealthiest people have almost doubled their wealth, while nearly 5 billion people have become poorer.
Using data from Forbes, the report’s authors calculated that the combined wealth of those five men — Tesla CEO Elon Musk; Bernard Arnault and his family, who own luxury goods group LVMH; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Oracle founder Larry Ellison; and investor Warren Buffett — increased from $453 billion in 2019 to $869 billion as of November 2023. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
In their methodology, the authors wrote that if that growth trajectory continues, Musk — the world’s richest person, according to Forbes — is projected to become a trillionaire in fewer than nine years, though they noted that the estimate is subject to uncertainty.
“If each of the five wealthiest men were to spend a million dollars daily, they would take 476 years to exhaust their combined wealth,” Oxfam’s authors wrote.
Representatives for these individuals could not immediately be reached late Monday.
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But, Oxfam said, for the world’s poorest people — who are more likely to be women and marginalized groups in every society — “daily life has become more brutal” since 2019. It pointed to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as “escalating conflict, the acceleration of the climate crisis and surging costs of living.”
The report also said that globally, men own $105 trillion more than women — a difference in wealth equivalent to more than four times the size of the U.S. economy.
Oxfam urged governments worldwide to adopt caps on CEO salaries, along with permanent taxes on wealth and excess profits.