We’re all getting used to the depressing idea that there’s a very small slice of people with almost unimaginable amounts of wealth - and new research has really highlighted it.
The report from Oxfam indicates that the wealth of the world’s five richest men (and yes, they’re all men) has gone up by a crazy 114% since 2020, meaning they’ve collectively more than doubled their hoards.
With a certain Elon Musk sitting in first place, it goes to show that even the steadily tanking value of his pet project X - formerly known as Twitter - hasn’t really made that much of a dent in his personal fortune yet.
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Oxfam has broken the gains down into a more digestible number, too, if you really want to feel jealous - those five billionaires were on average earning $14 million an hour since 2020.
Inflation may have been a huge factor around the world in the last year or two, but their wealth has grown three times as fast.
If you widen things out to include all billionaires, not just the five richest, the numbers get even more staggering. There are more than 2,500 billionaires at present, and Oxfam says they are $3.3 trillion richer than in 2020.
If that all sounds a bit bleak, well, things don’t get much better when Oxfam’s research turns to the majority of people.
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The bottom 60% of people on the planet (meaning nearly five billion of us) didn’t get any wealthier at all in the same time span, in fact losing 0.2% at a time when the cost of living keeps going up.
Oxfam has timed the release of this report to coincide with the start of the annual World Economic Forum today - the yearly event is often just called Davos, by those in the know, after the Swiss location where it’s held.
It’ll see policy-makers and high-powered individuals gather to discuss big themes and ideas, but is a bit of a source of disdain in some circles - given how many private jets and charter flights are routed into it every year.
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Oxfam International interim executive director Amitabh Behar offered a pretty stark perspective in the report: "We’re witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires' fortunes boom.
"This inequality is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else".