POLITICS
How many billionaires are there in the world in 2023?
The wealth of our planet’s richest grew a huge amount during the pandemic at the expense of eveyone else. These are the people who capitalised the most.
Billionaires, unsurprisingly, have not been struggling in the economic woes of the last three years. The covid-19 pandemic, high inflation, and now high interest rates are putting the vast majority of Americans under financial pressure this summer.
On the contrary, the billionaire class is now richer than ever; Oxfam reported last year that the world’s ten richest people, all men, had more than doubled their wealth from $700 billion pre-pandemic to $1.5 trillion at the beginning of 2022. Since 2020, 63% of all new wealth generated went to the richest ‘one percent’ of people, compared to 37% for everyone else combined.
“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires —a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest,” said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.
According to Forbes, there are 2,640 billionaires as of May 2023. This is 19 times the amount there was in 1987.
The world’s ten richest people are:
- Bernard Arnault & family, $235.2 billion
- Elon Musk, $177.2 billion
- Jeff Bezos, 133.2 billion
- Larry Ellison, $121.5 billion
- Bill Gates, $114.5 billion
- Warren Buffet, $112.8 billion
- Carlos Slim Helu & family, $98.5 billion
- Steve Ballmer, $96.8 billion
- Larry Page, $95.7 billion
- Michael Bloomberg, $94.5 billion
Billionaires and America’s richest have been the target of the Biden administration since he came into office. His latest billionaire tax proposal, which is very unlikely to get through Congress, would levy a 25% tax on all wealth over $100 million. A tax as large as this would reduce billionaires rapidly and be a step towards a more equal United States.
The covid-19 pandemic and its relation to billionaires
Billionaires benefited massively from the pandemic. In terms of owned businesses, tech companies did particularly well with consumers seeking out products to pass the days of lockdown boredom as well as companies like Amazon with large footholds in e-commerce being able to keep functioning with minimal disruption.
Another way in which billionaires were able to profit from the pandemic was through government responses. In order to retain any sort of investment while whole industries ground to a halt, interest rates were kept at record lows of 0.1%. The world’s richest were able to take out loans at never-before-seen good rates to capitalise this, either investing in their business or initiating stock buybacks.