The Rise Of The Oligarchs: all men [sic] are created equal but some are more equal than others

 

ABC News, 20 January 2024:

Two hundred and four billionaires were created, an average of almost four a week [in 2024].

The five richest people last year, according to Forbes, were:

1. Elon Musk

2. Jeff Bezos

3. Bernard Arnault and family

4. Larry Ellison

5. Mark Zuckerberg

"The crown jewel of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the world's richest man Elon Musk, running the world's largest economy," said Oxfam Australia chief executive Lyn Morgain.

Australia's 47 billionaires make an average $67,000 an hour, according to the report — a figure 1,300 times higher than that of the average Australian worker.

Mining magnate Gina Rinehart remains Australia's richest, and the world's 56th richest, person, with a net worth of $47.3 billion.

Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest is Australia's second richest, worth $29.2 billion and real estate developer Harry Triguboff is third, worth $25.3 billion.

The report finds that last year Australia's total billionaire wealth increased by more than 8 per cent, or $28 billion, at a rate of $3.2 million per hour.

Oxfam Australia's Ms Morgain notes the "rampant growth" of billionaires' wealth in Australia "was the legacy of colonisation", with 35 per cent of billionaire wealth inherited.....

Oxfam Australia's Ms Morgain notes the "rampant growth" of billionaires' wealth in Australia "was the legacy of colonisation", with 35 per cent of billionaire wealth inherited.....

"There is a relationship between this concentration of wealth and extractive industries in Australia. There's a particular historical context to this in Australia and it's that all our billionaires dug their wealth out of the ground," she says.

OXFAM, Takers not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth from colonialism, 16 January 2025:

Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023. Five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, crises of economy, climate and conflict mean the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990.

Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned - 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power. Our deeply unequal world has a long history of colonial domination which has largely benefited the richest people. The poorest, racialized people, women and marginalized groups have and continue to be systematically exploited at huge human cost. Today’s world remains colonial in many ways. The average Belgian has 180 times more voting power in the World Bank than the average Ethiopian. This system still extracts wealth from the Global South to the superrich 1% in the Global North at a rate of US$30million an hour. This must be reversed. Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised. Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest people who benefit the most....

A TWO TIER WORLD: THE FACTS

• In 2024, total billionaire wealth increased by US$2 trillion, with 204 new billionaires created. This is an average of almost four new billionaires per week.

• Total billionaire wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than in 2023.

• Each billionaire saw their fortunes grow by US$2million a day on average. For the richest 10 billionaires their fortunes grew by US$100 million a day on average.

• Last year Oxfam forecasted a trillionaire within a decade. If current trends continue, there will now be five trillionaires within a decade.

• Meanwhile, according to the World Bank, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990.

• 60% of billionaire wealth comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power.

• In 2023, more billionaires were created through inheritance than entrepreneurialism for the first time.

• In 2023, the richest 1% in the Global North were paid US$263 billion by the Global South through the financial system–over over US$30 million an hour.

• Of the US$64.82 trillion extracted from India by the UK over a century of colonialism, US$33.8 trillion went to the richest 10%; this would be enough to carpet London in £50 notes almost four times over.

DEVELOPMENT FRANCE-OXFAM, THE COMMITMENT TO REDUCING INEQUALITY INDEX 2024, Overview/Executive Summary, 16 October 2024, excerpts:

Now in its fifth edition, the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI) assesses the commitment of 164 countries and regions to fighting inequality. The CRI 2024 offers powerful new evidence on whether governments are acting to reduce inequality through policies on public services, fair taxation and labour rights. It reveals negative trends in the vast majority of countries since 2022. Four in five have cut the share of their budgets going to education, health and/or social protection; four in five have backtracked on progressive taxation; and nine in ten have regressed on labour rights and minimum wages. Nine out of ten countries have backtracked in one or more area, meaning without urgent policy actions to reverse this worrying trend,economic inequality will almost certainly continue to rise in 90% of countries.

As in previous editions, the top performers in this CRI are all high-income OECD countries led by Norway (see Table 02). Due to their labour policies, these countries start from much lower wage inequality. They have high social spending and collect more tax revenue, allowing widespread coverage of public services and the greatest impact on inequality.

However, even these top performers are lagging in many indicators. For example:

An average of 5% of their citizens face catastrophic out-of-pocket healthcare costs.

Many have less progressive tax policies than they should. For instance, many do not have measures to make very high value added tax (VAT) less regressive, while corporate income tax (CIT) rates are generally low, except in Japan. High earners also pay a lower effective tax rate than most other citizens: in Denmark, the effective tax rate paid by the richest 1% has fallen by five percentage points over the last two decades.

Coming third overall, Australia scores poorly on labour rights. It has very short fully paid parental leave, currently 11 weeks.....

Billionaires declared to be bad for the planet - especially those who send C02-e emitting rockets into space

OXFAM, Policy and Practice, Briefing Note, 7 November 2022, excerpt:

Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people

Overview

The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments. New analysis of the investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies. Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act. Governments must hold them to account, legislating to compel corporates and investors to reduce carbon emissions, enforcing more stringent reporting requirements and imposing new taxation on wealth and investments in polluting industries…...

Investments billionaires make help shape the future of our economy, for example by backing high carbon infrastructure, locking in high emissions for decades to come. Our study found that if the billionaires in the sample moved their investments to a fund with stronger environmental and social standards, it could reduce the intensity of their emissions by up to four times.

The role of corporates and investors in making cuts to carbon emissions that are needed to stop global warming of more than 1.5°C will be a hot topic at the upcoming 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Egypt. Yet despite the corporate spin, their actions fall far short of what is actually needed to stop catastrophic climate breakdown.

Governments should tackle this issue with data, regulation and taxation. They must systematically report on the emissions of different income groups in society, instead of relying on averages which obscure carbon inequality and undermine effective policy making….

In 2021, research conducted by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) revealed that the richest 1% (around 63 million people) alone were responsible for 15% of cumulative emissions and that they were emitting 35 times the level of CO2e compatible with the 1.5°C by 2030 goal of the Paris Agreement.⁷ Similar findings have been reported by economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel.⁸ Another study drew on public records to estimate that in 2018 emissions from the private yachts, planes, helicopters and mansions of 20 billionaires generated on average about 8,194 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e).⁹ By contrast, any individual among the poorest one billion people emits around 1.4 tonnes of CO2 each year.¹⁰

More recently, Twitter accounts tracking private jet travel have brought the issue of carbon inequality to public attention with revelations that, in a matter of just minutes, billionaires are emitting more CO2 than most people will emit in a year.¹¹…..

The billionaire space race has highlighted how a single space flight can emit as much CO2 as a normal person will in their lifetime.¹²12 Adding fuel to the fire, this same group of people have the resources to avoid the consequences of climate change, which will be felt most heavily by the poorest people….

Every person on earth emits carbon, but the sources of these emissions change the further up the income scale you move. A person’s total carbon footprint can be divided into personal consumption emissions, emissions through government spending and emissions linked to investments.

For the majority of society, people’s emissions from investments are minimal. But for the richest in society this is reversed, with emissions from investments becoming the biggest source – for the top 1%, between 50% to 70% of their emissions, according to one estimate.¹⁴ This mirrors income inequality, where the majority of people derive their incomes from work but the richest derive most of theirs from returns on their investments.

This paper begins with the world’s very richest people and examines the scale of their investment portfolios in order to make an estimate of their investment emissions…..

The 35-page paper can be read and downloaded from here.