I’ve always hated the very idea of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. I’ve never been myself, but that hasn’t stopped me ridiculing former NGO colleagues only too happy to go on squandering their supporters’ money rubbing shoulders with the business world’s ‘great and good’– or, more accurately, the worst of the world’s grasping, greedy, earth-trashing, plutocratic scumbags. And the politicians aren’t that much better either – and I’m not just talking about the increasingly deranged Donald Trump. Which made this year’s Parade of the Plutocrats a real corker.
Organisers and attendees pride themselves on Davos being the place to address the ‘biggest threats’ that the world faces. And, to be fair, its annual Global Risks Report regularly features the climate crisis, ecosystem collapse, and even worsening inequality and social polarisation. But it never mentions the source of all these interlocking crises, namely neoliberal capitalism itself. The Davos elite is far too self-serving ever to go there.
Every year, Oxfam piggybacks on this obscene jamboree by publishing its own annual wealth survey. This year’s report – (“Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power”) provides some mind-boggling insights, including the fact that the twelve richest individuals now hold more wealth than the poorest half of humanity — 4 billion people! Billionaires control more than half of the world’s media companies, and nine of the ten biggest social media platforms are in their hands.
So how does it make you feel to hear that there were more than 3,000 billionaires in 2025, with a combined wealth of $18.3 trillion, representing an increase of 16% over 2024 figures? That increase is 3 times faster than the average 5% annual increase. Since 2020, billionaire wealth has increased by a staggering 81%.
It’s almost beyond comprehension. We’ve seen these statistics moving in the same direction for so long that we’ve become inured to the annual repetition- “for whomsoever hath, more shall be given.” And we’ve simultaneously normalized the inevitability that these statistics will continue in the same direction, accepting that today’s politicians (in both autocratic and democratic countries) appear to have neither the will nor the capacity to do anything to reverse that trend.
Elastic bands immediately come to mind: at some point, however many times one twists that band, it somehow stays intact- until it doesn’t. Overstretched, as it were.
Is that process now underway?
Over the last year or so, we’ve seen uprisings in many different countries, including Nepal, Madagascar, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Peru, Mexico — more often than not led by young people. Rage at the growing influence of the billionaire class is very much part of this ‘Gen Z’ phenomenon — Oxfam’s report highlights the way in which the super-rich have emerged from the shadows in terms of their increasingly brazen interventions in politics. Just think Elon Musk here, with a chainsaw in one hand whilst giving a Nazi salute with the other.
The USA is the epicentre of this deeply disturbing trend. Stubbornly persistent adherence to the myth of the American Dream accounts for an almost inconceivable number of twists in that rubber band. But we’re not immune here in the UK either. Oxfam’s report reveals that the richest 56 people in the UK (all billionaires) now hold more wealth than nearly 40% of the population — 27,000,000 citizens. One in five UK citizens now lives in poverty, and yet the super-rich still pay lower taxes than anyone else – including such illustrious plutocrats as Sir James Dyson, Sir Anthony Bamford, and the utterly loathsome Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Intuitively, it’s so obvious what the consequences of this look like- even if our political elites (in Labour as much as in the Tories) spurn such insights. A recent report from the Fairness Foundation (“Inequality Knocks”) revealed that more than 60% of UK citizens believe the rich have far too much influence in UK politics, and that poverty and inequality are eroding the living conditions of people up and down the country. Fairness is fundamental to a functional society and democracy: “Growing inequality presents a genuine risk to the UK’s resilience, acting as both cause and amplifier of multiple societal challenges.” As a result, people are losing faith in our democracy, leading to “the very real possibility of societal breakdown.”
Over the top? Possibly. But polling insights are consistently stark: around 20% of UK voters under the age of 45 believe that our country would be “better off with a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother about elections,” compared with only 8% of those over 45.
It’s the failure of the centre-left to confront these issues when in power (in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Holland, and even in Scandinavian countries) that has paved the way for the rise of often xenophobic nationalist movements. As the economist Thomas Piketty puts it, “We seem to have given up on some ambitious continuation of the egalitarian agenda of making the most powerful economic actors accountable to democratic control, making them contribute to the public goods we need to fund.”
Whenever this model of capitalism fails (as it did in 2008, through a combination of economic austerity and populist scapegoating), citizens rightly become frustrated. But it’s the right wing that benefits from this frustration, with their devastatingly effective social media strategies emphasising people’s loss of control and dignity. As well as the basic lack of fairness — caused, as we all know, primarily by the right wing’s own policy prescriptions. Western politicians must address this challenge — before authoritarianism turns into fascism, the kind of fascism “that arrives in fancy dress”, as the poet Michel Rosen puts it. This challenge must be addressed by western politicians — before it’s too late. Before democracy weakens further.
Moreover, that demands one thing above all else: wealth taxes, both globally and in every Western country. The Global Solidarity Levies Task Force (led by France, Kenya, Barbados, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the African Union) is advocating for a targeted tax of 2% for today’s 3,000 billionaires, which would bring in somewhere between $200 billion and $250 billion a year. By some calculations, this would affect no more than 100 extended families around the world- even if, as the Task Force wryly observes, implementation would be “very challenging.”
Here in the UK, the Patriotic Millionaires and New Economics Foundation have also suggested a 2% annual wealth tax on assets of more than £10 million, taxing income from wealth at the same level as income from work, effectively creating an “extreme wealth line” to match the UK’s “extreme poverty line.” Around 20,000 taxpayers in the UK would be affected, generating revenues of between £20 billion and £24 billion a year.
That’s what fair taxation looks like in a country like the UK, filling gaps in our public finances, restoring trust in basic fairness, increasing investment in sustainable infrastructure, and so on. And in the process, reinforcing the first line of defence around the integrity of our democratic processes and institutions keeping authoritarianism at bay.
As you might imagine, I’m absolutely delighted that the case for wealth taxes here in the UK is now being made so articulately by Zack Polanski, leader of today’s resurgent Green Party. It’s already far too late for Labour to distance itself from the Rule of the Rich – Rachel Reeves looked completely at ease mingling with the rest of the Davos elite — raising the very real prospect of the Green Party becoming the principal opposition to today’s neoliberal nexus made-up of the Tories, Reform and Labour at the next General Election. With the Lib Dems taking their customary seat on that ideological fence!
Just think of that!
23 January 2026
