Jeff Bezos may have one of the world’s most expensive superyachts and enjoy seemingly endless holidays around the Mediterranean, but this high-gloss billionaire lifestyle could be blown out of the water by the emergence of the world’s first-ever trillionaire within the next ten years, as predicted in a stark warning issued by anti-poverty charity Oxfam.
Releasing their findings during the now-infamous annual gathering of political and business elites in Davos, the charity believes that the world will witness its first-ever individual with a net worth greater than one trillion US dollars — that’s $1,000,000,000,000 or one-thousand billion, should you need help visualising it — in only a few short years.
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Oxfam’s report emphasises that the already massive and fast-growing wealth gap between the world’s richest and poorest people has been “supercharged” thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and shows no signs of slowing in the years to come.
They point to the world’s current five richest people — which predictably include tech bigwigs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos as well as luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and the OG investment kingpin Warren Buffett — have enjoyed a massive 114% real terms surge in their wealth since 2020, making the already vast chasm between the super-rich and the rest of the world.
Oxfam’s interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, expressed understandable concern:
“We have the top five billionaires doubling their wealth, while almost 5 billion people are sinking into poverty. Oxfam predicts the emergence of a trillionaire within a decade, emphasizing that to combat poverty, it would require more than two centuries.”
Amitabh Behar
If, and more likely ‘when’, this trillion-dollar milestone is crossed, the smug individual in question — who, it’s important to note, may not even be present on the current rich list — would enjoy a plump net worth equivalent to or even greater than ‘oil-rich Saudi Arabia‘.
At the time of writing, Elon Musk reigns supreme as the world’s wealthiest person with a pile just under US$250 billion (c. A$375 billion), according to Forbes. At the other end of the wealth spectrum, around 5 billion people have experienced massively increased impoverishment since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in developing nations that were unable to provide the kind of financial support seen in the USA, UK, Australia, and other so-called Western nations during lockdowns.
Oxfam also nods to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which led to soaring energy and food costs around the world but which, you guessed it, most acutely affected the world’s poorest nations. As a result, Oxfam proposes an ‘inequality-busting’ agenda at this year’s Group of 20 Summit, set to be hosted in Brazil, with a particular focus on taxation of the wealthiest individuals, more effective taxation of large corporations, and renewed efforts against now-rampant tax avoidance.
Whether you consider the emergence of a trillionaire to be an inspirational crowning triumph of capitalism or the climax to a dystopic nightmare — there’s no denying I find myself drawn towards the latter camp — it’s hard to deny that the growing divide between rich and poor is a damning outcome for everyone involved. Does the political will exist to rectify it? I hope so, but only time will tell.