Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Billionaire Wealth Jumps Three Times Faster in 2025 to Highest Peak Ever, Sparking Dangerous Political Inequality
Billionaires 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people.
Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion (R299.1 trillion) – its highest level in history, according to a new Oxfam report today as the World Economic Forum opens in Davos.
Billionaire wealth has increased by 81 per cent since 2020. This comes as one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat and nearly half the world’s population live in poverty.
The report “Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power” analyses how the super-rich are securing political power to shape the rules of our economies and societies for their own gain and to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of people around the world.
The surge in billionaire wealth coincides with the US Trump administration pursuing a pro-billionaire agenda. It has slashed taxes for the super-rich, undermined global efforts to tax large corporations, reversed attempts to address monopoly power and contributed to the growth of AI-related stocks that have provided a boon to super-rich investors world-wide.
His presidency has sent a clear warning sign to the rest of the world about the power of the ultra-rich. Rather than solely a US phenomenon Oxfam’s paper demonstrates that rising oligarchy is undermining societies worldwide. Oxfam’s report finds:
- The collective wealth of billionaires last year surged by $2.5 trillion (R40.8 trillion), almost equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom half of humanity – 4.1 billion people.
- The number of billionaires topped 3,000 last year for the first time, while the richest, Elon Musk, became the first ever to surpass half a trillion dollars.
- Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people.
- The $2.5 trillion (R40.8 trillion) rise in billionaires’ wealth would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.
South Africa in Focus
South Africa reflects these global trends in its own concentrated wealth and persistent inequality.
In South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world, the concentration of extreme wealth sits alongside deep and persistent poverty, high unemployment and widespread food insecurity. According to the latest Forbes rankings of African wealth in 2025, the continent’s billionaire count increased from 20 to 22 between 2024 and 2025, with South Africa leading the pack by hosting seven of those billionaires, more than any other African nation, and contributing to a rise in combined billionaire wealth to around $105 billion in 2025, up from $82.4 billion the year before.
As the country heads into a critical cycle of local government elections, concerns about the influence of wealth on democratic processes are especially relevant at community level, where decisions directly affect access to services, housing, jobsand basic infrastructure. South Africa’s system of publicly disclosed political funding shows that large private donations play a significant role across the political spectrum, raising important questions about unequal access, influence and whose voices ultimately shape policy priorities; regardless of which parties hold office at municipal level.
“At a time when over 40 millionSouth Africans live below the Upper Bound Poverty Line, and over ten million South Africans lives below the extreme poverty line, affecting black women disproporionately the growing concentration of wealth and its proximity to political power should concern everyone who cares about democracy and fairness,” said Pooven Moodley, Acting Executive Director of Oxfam South Africa. “This is not about any one individual or political party. It is about whether our political and economic systems, including at local level, are delivering for the majority of people, or whether they continue to entrench privilege and power for a small and wealthy few.”
“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable.” said Oxfam Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Oxfam estimates that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens. A World Values Survey of 66 countries found that almost half of all people polled say that the rich often buy elections in their country.
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said.
Billions of people are being left facing avoidable hardships of poverty, hunger and death from preventable diseases because the system is rigged against them. Worldwide one in four people face food insecurity, having to regularly skip meals.
The rate of poverty reduction has stagnated with levels broadly where they were in 2019. Extreme poverty is rising again in Africa. Political decisions made by governments across the world last year to slash aid budgets have directly hit people living in poverty and could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030. Extreme inequality means the super rich can opt out of society, and it means that ending poverty is outsourced to the poor themselves with the demise of inclusive social contracts that form the foundation of democracy.
Civil liberties and political rights are being rolled back and suppressed; 2024 was the nineteenth successive year of decline with a quarter of all countries curtailing freedoms of expression. Last year there were more than 142 significant anti-government protests across 68 countries which authorities typically met with violence.
“Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger.” said Behar.
The chances of democratic backsliding through, for example, the erosion of the rule of law or the undermining of elections is seven times more likely in highly unequal countries. “No country can afford to be complacent. The pace that economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast,” he said.
Governments are allowing the super-rich to dominate media and social media companies. Billionaires own more than half the world’s largest media companies and all the main social media companies.
The report cites Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post, Elon Musk with Twitter/X, Patrick Soon-Shiong with the Los Angeles Times and a billionaire consortium buying large shares of The Economist. In France, far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré now controls CNews, rebranding it as the French equivalent of Fox News. In the UK, three-quarters of newspaper circulation is controlled by four super-rich families.
The report cites evidence that only 27 per cent of top editors globally are female and just 23 per cent belong to racialized groups respectively. This has seen their voices marginalized, while minorities like immigrants and people of colour are often stigmatized and scapegoated and critics silenced.
Authorities in Kenya have used X to track, punish and even abduct and torture government critics. A study by the University of California meanwhile found that in the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition of X the rates of hate speech increased by about 50 per cent.
“Our societies feel more toxic today because they demonstrably are, but not always for the reasons we’re being told. The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty. Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality healthcare, action on climate change and tax fairness,” Behar said.
Oxfam is calling on governments to prioritise:
- Realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress.
- Effectively taxing the super-rich to reduce their power, including with broad-base taxes on income and wealth at high enough rates to reduce massive levels of inequality.
- Stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich, ensuring more media independence, and banning hate speech.
- Accountability for the political empowerment of ordinary citizens, including stronger protection for people’s freedoms of association, assembly and expression and for civil society organisations and trade unions.
