Wealth Inequality: Oxfam Predicts Trillionaire Rise in the Next Decade

The expanding wealth gap between the super-rich and the poor could see the world’s first trillionaire emerge within just a few decades, an advocacy group focused on fighting poverty has warned.

Oxfam International released a report projecting the emergence of a trillionaire in the next 10 years, while estimating that ending poverty could take 230 years. The report draws attention to the fact that the top five richest people in the world have more than doubled their wealth since 2020, in tandem with a further 5 billion people experiencing deepening poverty during the same period.

The report points the finger at corporation practices of squeezing workers, dodging taxes, privatizing the state, and driving climate breakdown for this rising gap. It argues that extreme inequality can only be tackled if governments take substantial action to redistribute power away from billionaires and corporations towards ordinary citizens.

Billionaires’ wealth rose 34 percent from the end of 2020, which is three times the rate of inflation. The research also brought to light that billionaire CEOs or principal shareholders chair seven out of the ten largest publicly listed corporations, and the combined value of the ten firms stood at $10.2 trillion.

Additionally, the report also reveals an astonishing wealth gap between men and women, where men have $105 trillion more wealth than women, surpassing four times the volume of the U.S. economy. In the U.S., the typical wealth of a black family’s household is only 15.8 percent of that of a white family.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recognized this grim reality of billionaires accumulating more wealth while the working class struggles but, in his foreword for the report, pointed out with optimism that awareness is growing about the detrimentality of a system catering to greed instead of fundamental human values.