To celebrate the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, the Oxfam publishes a study on how much of the world’s wealth is owned by the super-rich. This year’s study was impressive, as the “Guardian” newspaper writes.

It was revealed that the five richest men in the world have doubled their wealth in the years from 2020 onwards. Seven of the 10 largest companies in the world have a billionaire as CEO or major shareholder! Combined, the value of these companies – which include Apple, Microsoft and Saudi Aramco – exceeds the GDP of every country in Africa and Latin America combined. That is 87 countries. Essentially everything that two billion people buy, sell, consume, produce and dream about in an entire year.

The organization also said that, within a decade, the world will likely see its first trillionaire. A trillion is a mind-numbing number. Even Ronald Reagan couldn’t stomach it. “A few weeks ago I mentioned such a number, a trillion dollars, incomprehensible, and since then I’ve been trying to think of a way to show how big a trillion really is,” he said in 1981 when talking about the US national debt.

But what does it mean for a society to have its first trillionaire, and how does it differ from the wealth of oligarchs in the past?

John Jacob Astor, a German-American businessman, believed to be the first American millionaire. He made his fortune in the 18th and 19th centuries by buying and selling things: namely furs, New York real estate, and opium smuggled into China. Astor predicted trends and exploited geopolitics to enrich himself. He sold many things to many people and his wealth created more wealth. So far, so simple.

Then he came John D. Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire. Rockefeller built and invested in oil refineries just as the world was getting “addicted” to kerosene and gasoline. He came to preside over a huge monopoly, stifling competition, which made him and his company, Standard Oil, even richer. What Rockefeller sold to the public was more ephemeral than Astor’s furs and houses. The very nature of energy is that it is consumed. But you could still see her, smell her and touch her. For better or worse, Standard Oil products existed in the real world. We all pay the environmental price.

There are approximately 2,640 Rockefellers in our world today, according to “Forbes”. All of them started in their own unique way: starting companies, buying buildings, inheriting assets from family, etc., although the new billionaires work mainly in the fields of economics and technology, benefiting less directly from material things rather than knowledge, ideas and games of chance. The way many of these fortunes have grown to such dizzying proportions is through investment and speculation.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the 500 richest people in the world, is updated at the end of each trading day, revealing how dramatically that wealth can rise and fall. On January 24, Elon Muskwhich is at the top of the list, lost $937 million, just like that. Life is hard for the men and women at the bottom too… The financier of Wall Street, Carl Icahn, at No. 497, lost $17.9 million from the previous day. THE aristocrat Hugh Grosvenor, whose property is in real estate, he lost and gained nothing that day. It ranked 157th.

The profits of the super rich are literally unearned. This isn’t a value judgment: it’s the IRS’s term for money earned through “investment-type income, such as taxable interest, ordinary dividends, and capital gain distributions.”

Most of us pay tax on our incomes. And if we are lucky enough to have assets, we pay tax on the gains when we sell them. Billionaires, on the other hand, can borrow against their growing investments year after year without owing a dime in taxes, allowing them to pay lower tax rates on their income.

The imminent arrival of the billionaire it marks another step backwards in the fight for a more balanced economy and a healthier democracy. The billionaire class, after all, distorts the balance of power in the market, in politics and in society.

According to one study, 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office.

Historically, the most significant reductions in economic inequality have come after wars, epidemics, and widespread inequality. We are living in an age characterized by all these things, but we are not coming out of it any wiser: the proof is that we will soon enter the age of the trillionaires. Raising taxes, strengthening democratic institutions, and seeking to redistribute resources to those who need them are all excellent initiatives that deserve broad public support.