Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in than in At least five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since Inequality is out of control. Furthermore, our deeply unequal world remains colonial in many ways. There is a long history of colonial domination which has largely benefited the richest people. This must be reversed.
Trillions are being gifted in inheritance, creating a new aristocratic oligarchy that has immense power in our politics and our economy. This is an average of almost four new billionaires per week. People living in poverty all over the world continue to face multiple crisesβfrom the scars of the pandemic to conflict and climate breakdown, driving further poverty, hunger, and inequality. In its most recent report on poverty, the World Bank calculates that if current growth rates continue and inequality does not decrease, it will take more than a century to end poverty.
The idea that extreme wealth is a reward for extreme talent is pervasive and strongly reinforced in our media and popular culture. But this perception is not rooted in reality. In , more billionaires were created through inheritance than entrepreneurialism for the first time. The unearned nature of much of the extreme wealth of the ultra-rich is arguably a result of colonialism and its impacts. Today most billionaires still live in the rich countries of the Global North, despite these countries being home to just one-fifth of the global population.
Colonialism, and the ideas that underpinned it, allowed the exploitation of the working-class majority to be taken to an even greater level of extremity. Tens of millions of people across the world have suffered because the ideas of racism and white supremacy gave justification and moral license to unprecedented and systematic levels of brutality, exploitation, and, at times, extermination.
This has created a deeply unequal world. A world torn apart by division based on racism and sexism. A world that continues to systematically extract wealth from the Global South to primarily benefit the richest people in the Global North. We stand in solidarity with all those fighting for an equal world. Those fighting each day for economies that are based on care and wellbeing for all, not on the greed of a few.
