The rich just keep on getting richer, and one of them could become the world's first-ever trillionaire within the next decade, according to the anti-poverty group Oxfam International.
The organization released its annual report this week as business and political elites began to gather to hobnob during the World Economic Forum. Warning of an impending "decade of division," the report's most stark findings highlighted the growing wealth gap between billionaires and, well, everyone else.
Could the world's first trillionaire be Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also owns the social media platform X? How about investment guru Warren Buffett? Or Amazon founder Jeff Bezos?
All three of the billionaires are among the five richest men whose fortunes shot up by 114% since 2020, while the world was reeling during the COVID-19 pandemic, Oxford found using figures from Forbes. French businessman Bernard Arnault, who founded the luxury company LVMH, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison are the other two rounding out the five richest people in the world.
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Oxfam has spent years drawing attention to the growing disparities between the ultra-rich and the rest of the global population during the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
The gap is one that has existed for decades, but Oxfam contended it's only been “supercharged” since the coronavirus pandemic.
While tax laws, monopolies and deregulation ensure that the cash is funneled into pockets of the wealthy elite, "billions of people (are) shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war," Oxfam International Interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar said in a statement.
"This inequality is no accident," Behar said. "The billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else."
While the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020, "nearly five billion people have been made poorer" since the pandemic, according to Oxfam, which estimated that it could take 229 years to eradicate the scourge of poverty. If nothing changes, one of the world's billionaires could reach trillionaire status in the next 10 years, the group said.
In the United States, where more billionaires live than in any other country on the planet, Musk is the richest with a fortune of about $2.26 billion, Oxfam's analysis of Forbes data found. Musk, Bezos and Ellison – the U.S.' three richest men – have together increased their wealth by 84% since 2020, the report concluded.
Meanwhile, people worldwide are working longer hours while the wages of nearly 800 million workers haven't kept up with inflation in the last two years, Oxfam said.
"The United States is home to the most billionaires on Earth, including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, names that have become synonymous with obscene wealth," Oxfam American President and CEO Abby Maxman said in a statement. “We must stop normalizing extreme inequality and take deliberate action to prevent the ultra-wealthy and the corporations they control from tightening their stranglehold on our politics and economy.”
Oxfam is calling on governments to usher in "a new era of public action" by implementing measures to reduce or slow the widening wealth disparity.
Those policies, per Oxfam, include investing in public services like education and healthcare, taxing the wealthiest people and largest corporations in every country, and breaking up monopolies to make businesses more competitive.
“Every corporation has a responsibility to act but very few are," Behar said. "Governments must step up."
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]