Billionaires 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people
Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion – its highest level in history, according to a new Oxfam report today as the World Economic Forum opens in Davos.
Billionaire wealth has increased by 81 per cent since 2020. This comes as one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat and nearly half the world’s population live in poverty.
The surge in billionaire wealth coincides with the US Trump administration pursuing a pro-billionaire agenda. It has slashed taxes for the super-rich, undermined global efforts to tax large corporations, reversed attempts to address monopoly power and contributed to the growth of AI-related stocks that have provided a boon to super-rich investors world-wide.
His presidency has sent a clear warning sign to the rest of the world about the power of the ultra-rich. Rather than solely a US phenomenon Oxfam’s paper demonstrates that rising oligarchy is undermining societies worldwide. Oxfam’s report finds:
- The collective wealth of billionaires last year surged by $2.5 trillion, almost equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom half of humanity – 4.1 billion people.
- The number of billionaires topped 3,000 last year for the first time, while the richest, Elon Musk, became the first ever to surpass half a trillion dollars.
- Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people.
- The $2.5 trillion rise in billionaires’ wealth would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.
New Zealand has four people with over a billion US dollars of wealth. These four billionaires together own more wealth than a third of New Zealanders, over 1.8 million people combined. At the same time, more than 900,000 people in Aotearoa suffer from food insecurity, over 17% of the population.
“It’s obscene to see such a massive accumulation of wealth by so few individuals, while nearly a million people in Aotearoa can’t afford enough to eat” said Nick Henry, Oxfam Aotearoa’s Advocacy and Policy Lead.
“No-one should be going hungry in a society that produces so much wealth. We need our political leaders to stand up to the billionaires and multi-millionaires and say we’re going to tax this extreme wealth so that every Kiwi family can have a decent quality of life.”
“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable.” said Oxfam Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Oxfam estimates that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens. A World Values Survey of 66 countries found that almost half of all people polled say that the rich often buy elections in their country.
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said.
Billions of people are being left facing avoidable hardships of poverty, hunger and death from preventable diseases because the system is rigged against them. Worldwide one in four people face food insecurity, having to regularly skip meals.
The rate of poverty reduction has stagnated with levels broadly where they were in 2019. Extreme poverty is rising again in Africa. Political decisions made by governments across the world last year to slash aid budgets have directly hit people living in poverty and could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
Civil liberties and political rights are being rolled back and suppressed; 2024 was the nineteenth successive year of decline with a quarter of all countries curtailing freedoms of expression. Last year there were more than 142 significant anti-government protests across 68 countries which authorities typically met with violence.
“Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger.” said Behar.
The chances of democratic backsliding through, for example, the erosion of the rule of law or the undermining of elections is seven times more likely in highly unequal countries. “No country can afford to be complacent. The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast,” he said.
Governments are allowing the super-rich to dominate media and social media companies. Billionaires own more than half the world’s largest media companies and all the main social media companies.
The report cites Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post, Elon Musk with Twitter/X, Patrick Soon-Shiong with the Los Angeles Times and a billionaire consortium buying large shares of The Economist. In France, far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré now controls CNews, rebranding it as the French equivalent of Fox News. In the UK, three-quarters of newspaper circulation is controlled by four super-rich families.
The report cites evidence that only 27% of top editors globally are female and just 23% belong to racialized groups respectively. This has seen their voices marginalized, while minorities like immigrants and people of colour are often stigmatized and scapegoated and critics silenced.
Authorities in Kenya have used X to track, punish and even abduct and torture government critics. A study by the University of California meanwhile found that in the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition of X the rates of hate speech increased by about 500 per cent.
“Our societies feel more toxic today because they demonstrably are, but not always for the reasons we’re being told. The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty. Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality healthcare, action on climate change and tax fairness,” Behar said.
Oxfam is calling on governments to prioritise:
- Realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress.
- Effectively taxing the super-rich to reduce their power, including with broad-base taxes on income and wealth at high enough rates to reduce massive levels of inequality.
- Stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich, ensuring more media independence, and banning hate speech.
- Accountability for the political empowerment of ordinary citizens, including stronger protection for people’s freedoms of association, assembly and expression and for civil society organisations and trade unions.
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