In a report presented on 19^th January 2026 at the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the British organisation Oxfam reported that global billionaires’ fortunes increased by 16% in 2025, reaching $18.3 trillion. Since 2020, according to the Global Inequality Report, their collective wealth has grown by 81%, or $8.2 trillion — a sum that, Oxfam argues, would be sufficient to eradicate global poverty twenty-six times over.

These gains were recorded while one in four people worldwide lacks sufficient daily food and almost half of the global population lives in poverty. The wealth of more than 3,000 billionaires — the highest level ever recorded — is increasingly exacerbating economic and political divisions that threaten democratic stability worldwide.

The report highlights how most governments are capitulating to the ever more overt influence of the wealthy. Many populations are pushing back. Over the past twelve months, youth-led uprisings against inequality have erupted in several countries across Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. However, protests against corruption, austerity, unemployment and the high cost of living have been systematically ignored and, in many cases, harshly repressed by governments.

“Governments around the world are making the wrong choice: they are choosing to defend wealth rather than freedom. Instead of committing to redistributing wealth from the richest to the rest of the population, they choose the power of the wealthy. They choose to suppress the anger of people driven to desperation by lives that have become unbearable,” said Max Lawson, co-author of the report.

Oxfam’s study draws on a range of sources and datasets, from the World Inequality Database to Forbes’ list of the world’s richest individuals, and argues that the wealth boom is accompanied by a striking concentration of political influence. According to experts, billionaires are four thousand times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens.

The shameful increase in the wealth of these plutocrats, Oxfam denounces, is the result of policies pursued by US President Donald Trump, whose second administration cut taxes, shielded multinational corporations from international pressure and loosened controls on monopolies.

It is also worth noting that rising valuations of companies dominating the artificial intelligence sector have generated further unexpected windfalls for investors who were already extremely wealthy. “The widening gap between the rich and the rest of the world is simultaneously creating an extremely dangerous and unsustainable political deficit,” said Oxfam’s Executive Director, Amitabh Behar.

Oxfam has urged governments to adopt national plans to reduce inequality, to levy higher taxes on the super-rich and to strengthen barriers between money and politics, including restrictions on lobbying and campaign financing.

Unfortunately, wealth taxes are currently applied in only a handful of countries, such as Norway, while others — from the United Kingdom to France and Italy — have merely debated the possibility of introducing similar measures.

The organisation estimates that the $2.5 trillion added to billionaires’ fortunes last year is roughly equivalent to the wealth held by the poorest 4.1 billion people — half of the world’s population. Elon Musk, head of Tesla and SpaceX, became last year the first individual to surpass a net worth of $500 billion.

Behar warned that many governments are “making the wrong choices to appease a privileged elite”, pointing to cuts in aid and the erosion of civil liberties. The report also highlights the growing grip of ultra-wealthy business figures over the media, both traditional and digital. As evidence, Oxfam cites the shareholdings of companies owned by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Patrick Soon-Shiong and the French businessman Vincent Bolloré.

See, Sempre più soldi e potere in mano ai super ricchi