From billionaire boom to trillionaire threat

And so we really try to draw attention to the excesses of wealth and the inequality that that's creating in the world, compared to really the stagnation of progress for not just the poorest, but the majority of people in the world who have not seen their wealth substantially increase. While the wealth of billionaires is trending upwards at times it seems like an exponential increase.

The majority of people, and I think the majority of New Zealanders could relate to this, find it pretty hard to save more than a small buffer week to week, So the majority of people, it's a bit of an American expression, But you'd say a living paycheck to paycheck. While the billionaires are really stacking cash at a faster rate that they can, then they can spend it at a faster rate that they are willing to give it away. Their wealth is growing faster than they even seem to

know what to do with it. I think the rest of us would have some pretty good ideas about what to do with some of that wealth. Collectively, and bearing in mind that if billionaires paid their fair share of taxes like there, like what an ordinary person reading the tax code would think that they should be paying, they would still be living an unimaginable luxury. As multi billionaires or as you know, multi multi millionaires, their lifestyles are

not really a threat. What needs to be rained in is the level of power and influence, disproportionate influence over the economy and the political system, This accumulation of essentially useless wealth.

about the middle household income. But of course a billion dollars is a thousand times that, So that's fourteen thousand years of the middle household income. And when you put that in perspective, it's possible to earn a million dollars just by having you know, maybe two people working sort of middle income jobs for most of their working lives. You could earn a million dollars. But it's impossible for

anyone to earn a billion dollars. You're talking at that point about wealth generated by wealth, wealth generated by a qum relating the benefits of work that other people are doing and really disproportionately. So you asked how many new billionaires we're seeing? So and the last time Oxford produced our report in January this year, we looked at the twenty twenty four figures up until November twenty twenty four and found two thousand, seven hundred and sixty nine billionaires

in the world. So that was two hundred and four more than the previous year twenty twenty three, and we said that that meant nearly four a week new billionaires.

as always do for the January report. So without holding me to that level of scrudiny brutany on my methodology, just looking at the Forbes Rich List, which is what we use each year to to find those figures, I see three twenty two billionaires currently on that Forbes Rich List as of today, and that's an increase of three hundred and fifty three from this time last year, which means more than six new billionaires every week, So that shows an escalation on the on the previous year.

the company if they refused his raise. The payment will be in the form of more than four hundred and twenty million shares of Tesla stock. There is a big caveat here. Tesla has to reach an eight point five trillion dollar market value that's almost five times higher than it is today.

by the time this podcast goes to air. But Forbes says that he lost seventeen billion dollars yesterday and it will go up again tomorrow and maybe down next week and up again, because this is bouncing around with the value of the Tesla stock price and whatever crypto assets

and other things are involved in that net worth. And to put that in perspective, the like the national deficit of the New Zealand government as six point seven billion New Zealand dollars, which would be less than four billion US, which means that Elon Musk lost about four times more than that just yesterday on the stock market. And we'll make it again next week and then it will be bouncing around. But the long term trend is yeah, going

up by hundreds of billions of dollars. And in twenty twenty four we estimated that there would be a trillionaire within ten years looking at the figures from twenty twenty three, and the latest report from this year is estimating five trillionaires within a decade. So that's the trend that we're on. We're on track for an ever smaller number of people to control an ever larger proportion of the world's wealth,

comparable to half of humanity. And the consequences for that for our economy are ever greater instability, and for our political system is an ever greater concentration of power and influence. And you see that especially in the United States, but also in other countries. And one of the reasons I pick on the United States is not just the levels of inequality and the number of billionaires there, but it's also a sign of how we can make a difference

to the influence of billionaires. Because you know, anyone who follows US political news will know that the Citizens United decision that removed caps on donations to political candidates and political action committees was and calling that donation a kind of free speech, that removed the limits that had been in place on billionaire in corporate power to influence elections. You see some hopeful signs of candidates who pleedged not to take money from those kinds of big donors. Or packs.

But here in A and zelland we do have limits on political donations, and we need to keep up that kind of scrutiny. So it's not a foregone conclusion that billionaires and corporations should control our political system. We can regulate that and rain that in. And I'd actually go a bit further and say, it's not a foregone conclusion that these extremes of wealth, these individuals and increasingly monopolistic corporations should control our economy.

that we're seeing. But to answer the question, I think that the really the only way to be if one found oneself in the position of being a billionaire. The only ethical way to cope with that situation, I think would be to put in place a plan to not be a billionaire anymore and more. Billionaires could start by

paying their fair share of taxes. You could simply give that instruction to your accountant to comply with the regulations, but also to support as as many wealthy individuals do, actually support a tightening of loopholes so that they do pay their fair share. And then there's the question of philanthropy, and so someone who does have more money than they need and after paying their fair share of taxes can and should look to do good with that money and

distribute to causes that have a broader social benefit. But there's no compulsion on billionaires to do that, and I think we have to be a bit skeptical about where any billionaire today is fulfilling their ethical obligations to society. The one example that's sometimes used of a billionaire who did do what I'm saying of giving up a large share of their wealth was the late Chuck Feenie, an Irish American billionaire who made his money on duty free stores.

I think, and without publicizing or trumpeting. This actually confidentially transferred his wealth into a charitable trust, but which over the course of the next decade gave away the majority of his wealth. And what was important about that is that that was the mission of the charitable trust, and it was wound up in twenty twenty having given away billions of dollars. And when Chuck Feenie he died, he

was no longer a billionaire. He was very comfortable as a multi millionaire living his best life, but he had given away enough money to no longer be a billionaire. And there are examples of other billionaires today who seemed to be on that track. Mackenzie Scott, who's a successful author, co founder of Amazon, and was married for a long time to Jeff Bezos, helping raise their children and contributing

to the wealth that they generated as a family. But since they divorced, Mackenzie Scott has been on quite a different track from Jeff Bezos and has been giving away a substantial portion of her wealth through no strings attached, direct grants to working charities. And that's a big difference from the billionaires that you see putting money into their

own directly or family controlled foundations. Which is really another way of holding wealth, and they do trickle that money out to other nonprofits and charities, but in the meantime they are using their foundations to prop up their reputations and their influence and their lifestyles as well.

want to give something back. The criticism that I was making earlier of the typical billionaire style is very different to any of that it's establishing one's own private you know, closely held foundations to concentrate wealth and call it charity.

And I'm referencing there really a recent report by the Institute of Policy Studies in the US that looked at the Giving Pledge, which was a philanthropic initiative in two thousand ten by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and others where they pledged to give away the majority of their wealth during their lifetimes or by the time of their death. And looking at that, criticism of the closely held foundation

is one of the main ones of that report. The story of Chuck Feenie I also got from that report, and the criticism being that no other billionaire, with the exception perhaps of Mackenzie Scott and others who seemed to be on that track, no other billionaire is making that commitment to no longer be a billionaire. And they even looked at the twenty two pledgers who had died since twenty ten and found that only eight of those had fulfilled their pledge to give away the majority of their wealth.

And of course, for many billionaires giving the majority of their wealth, they would still be billionaires. There are recommendations in the report, including that the tax system be revised to capture more effectively the public share of this large accumulated wealth, including to look again at the tax exemptions that are given for these privately held foundations. And then there are recommendations for billionaires who do want to fulfill their pledge, who do want to try to be an

ethical billionaire. But from Oxfad, I think we would put the emphasis on the tax system, on the democratic ways in which we need to reign in excessive wealth and really take back the public share that we have all contributed to this wealth, you know, through our work, through our work not just working for billionaires, but working all their corporations, but working to maintain the economy and the

infrastructure that allows them to generate wealth. And it's great that wealth is being generated, but let's share it more fairly among everyone who contributes to it. And really that's all of us. So billionaires can be billionaires, I suppose, but we should all be benefiting from the accumulation of wealth. The society gets richer, we should be seeing those benefits spread more evenly as well.