The Rise of the Billionaires. Democracy for sale to the highest bidder?

Latest data shows that the world’s richest people own a larger share of the world’s wealth than ever before; This makes a mockery of the ‘trickle down’ effect and threatens democracy. Aleta Moriarty reports.

Oxfam report“Defending Freedom Against Billionaire Power” shows how our leaders are selling democracy to the highest bidders. This shows billionaire wealth growing three times faster in the year following Donald Trump’s election in November 2024 than the previous five-year average.

While US billionaires experienced the most dramatic increases, the wealth of billionaires around the world also reached double digits. Accordingly Guard,

Australian billionaires increased their wealth by an average of close to $600,000 a day.

Boom time for the world’s billionaires

For the first time in history, the planet is now home to more than 3,000 billionaires, marking an unprecedented peak in concentrated wealth. Last October, Elon Musk broke new ground by becoming the world’s first half-trillionaire.

At the same time, a quarter of the people in the world are struggling with hunger. While the world is on track to have five trillionaires within a decade, the number of people living in poverty has remained virtually unchanged since 1990.

While last year’s billionaire wealth alone holds enough money to distribute US$250 to every person, this leaves ultra-rich individuals over US$500 billion richer than before. The twelve richest billionaires now control more resources than the four billion people in the bottom half of humanity.

Increasing food insecurity and poverty

The long-standing economic justification for these pro-rich policies, the trickle-down effect that rising tides lift all boats, is now dead (as in. Editor’s note). Progress in reducing poverty has stalled since 2020, and African countries have actually seen poverty rates rise.

By 2022, 3.83 billion people, almost half of humanity, were living in poverty.

A quarter of the world’s population currently experiences moderate to severe food insecurity; This represents an increase of 42.6% between 2015 and 2024. The cost of a nutritious meal will be 30% more in 2024 than in 2020. Those living in poverty in poor countries will have to spend a much larger share of their income on basic nutrition than their counterparts in rich countries. As the wealth of billionaires increases, billions of people cannot eat.

While conflicts, wars and the climate crisis have a devastating impact, government investments in food security have simultaneously shrunk, with the share of total expenditures falling by 10.6% since 2019.

Rich countries are exacerbating the crisis by cutting foreign aid at unprecedented rates. Aid budgets are expected to fall by 17% in 2025, following a 9% decrease in 2024. Forecast models suggest that these funding cuts, including shutting down USAID, could result in more than 14 million excess deaths by the end of the decade, an average of 2.4 million deaths annually from 2025.

Projected losses include: 4.5 million children under five; This equates to the lives of more than 700,000 young people every year.

Inequality undermines democracy

A century ago Judge Louis Brandeis he framed the fundamental choice: “We must make our choice. We can either have extreme wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have democracy. We cannot have both.”

Countries with high inequality are seven times more at risk of democracy collapse than more equal societies. Few factors more reliably predict the collapse of democracy than rising inequality.

In 2024, freedom of expression was restricted in a quarter of the world’s countries. According to Freedom House, 2024 marked the nineteenth consecutive year of global democracy with a deterioration of political rights and civil liberties in more than 60 countries.

We are witnessing the erosion and decline of civil and political rights all over the world.

suppression of protests and silencing of dissent.

The ultra-rich have established their political dominance through a three-pronged strategy: direct purchase of political influence, investment in institutions that legitimize elite control, and personal occupation of government positions.

In 2024, donations from just 100 billionaire families accounted for one-sixth of all dollars spent by U.S. candidates, parties and committees; that’s a record-breaking $2.6 billion. Voting by World Values ​​Survey The survey found that nearly half of respondents worldwide believe the wealthy routinely buy their country’s elections.

purchasing effect

More than 11 percent of the world’s billionaires have held or held political office. Oxfam estimates that billionaires are at least 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people. An oligarchy with better branding.

Billionaires control not only governments but also information. More than half of the world’s largest media companies have billionaire owners. Nine of the 10 largest social media companies are run by just six billionaires. Overlapping with media companies, eight of the top 10 AI companies are controlled by billionaires, and just three dominate almost 90% of the prolific AI chatbot market.

They own the narrative, the platform, and increasingly the algorithm that determines what the truth will look like.

Billionaires have long used their vast wealth to buy off politicians and political parties, subverting the power of the majority in favor of an unjust ‘one dollar, one vote’ system.

Companies associated with the world’s 10 richest men spent US$88 million on lobbying in the US in 2024; this exceeded the total spending by all unions of US$55 million. The solution comes into play when capital exceeds labor by this margin.

Image: Oxfam

The way forward

To curb the political power of billionaires, governments need to build strong firewalls between wealth and politics, the Oxfam report underlines:

• regulating lobbying through independent regulatory bodies and closing revolving doors between public agency and private interests;
• mandatory public lobbying registrations;
• mandatory disclosure of lobbying activities;
• stronger conflict of interest rules and cooling-off periods;
• strengthening transparency and setting clear limits on campaign financing;
• Public financing of elections to reduce dependence on large private donations.

They also emphasize the importance of promoting greater media independence by limiting ownership concentration, supporting alternative public and independent media (now, there’s an idea! Editor’s note.), regulating algorithmic transparency, and creating oversight through state-funded bodies independent of billionaire influence.

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Practitioner researcher in the field of human rights, disability inclusion and gender. He completed his doctorate at the University of Melbourne. Twenty years of working experience in organizations such as the United Nations, UN Women, the World Bank, and the University of Melbourne.