Beat the billionaires. The first trillionaires are on their way.
If current trends continue, five people are expected to amass at least $1 trillion in wealth over the next decade, according to Oxfam’s annual inequality report released on Sunday.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person with a net worth of more than $430 billion, will cross that mark in less than five years.
He will soon be joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and family.
The Oxfam report, based on data compiled by Forbes, is timed to coincide with the start of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, an elite gathering of some of the world’s richest people and leaders. Its release also comes on the eve of the inauguration of billionaire president Donald Trump.
Oxfam found that 2024 was a very profitable year for the world’s wealthiest individuals and families, fueled in part by a rise in the US stock market. Their net worth expanded so quickly that last year Oxfam revised its estimate that just one trillionaire will be crowned in the next decade.
“It’s an unimaginable amount,” Rebecca Riddell, Oxfam America’s senior policy leader, said of $1 trillion. “This extreme inequality is nothing to celebrate.”
Rankings in the billionaire class increased by more than 200 last year to nearly 2,770. Their wealth rose by $2.1 trillion — three times faster than the previous year — to a total of $15 trillion. In the United States alone, home to 816 billionaires, this group’s net worth rose by $1.4 trillion.
Moreover, Oxfam found that if any of the 10 richest men lost 99% of their wealth, he would still be a billionaire.
Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty is roughly the same as it was in 1990, according to the report, citing World Bank data.
This year’s Oxfam report, titled Makers Not Takers, also shows that more than a third of billionaires’ wealth comes from inheritance. In 2023, more billionaires amassed their wealth through inheritance than through entrepreneurship for the first time. In addition, all 17 billionaires under the age of 30 had their wealth transferred to them.
Riddell said two-thirds of countries don’t tax direct descent from heirs to help transfer these assets. In the United States, estate tax has been cut through tax cuts and strategies to avoid it.
“Unchecked, we are about to see the largest transfer of intergenerational wealth in human history – if we don’t act – that is rarely earned and hardly taxed at all,” she said, adding that Oxfam is calling on governments to ensure the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
The rich are increasingly influencing politics. An example, says Oxfam, is the upcoming Trump administration. It’s packed with nearly a dozen people worth at least $1 billion alone or with their spouses, making it one of the richest in history.
Musk, who pumped more than $260 million into Trump’s 2024 campaign, serves as a top adviser to the president-elect and co-leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“Musk and his overwhelming influence over policy and politics are emblematic of the unchecked billionaire power that has come to define our economic and political system,” Riddell said.
In his farewell speech from the Oval Office last week, President Joe Biden warned of the “concentration of power among a very few.”
“Today, an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is taking shape in America that is giving away our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and everyone’s fair chance to get ahead,” he said.
