Hundreds of people who've already made it are asking governments to make them pay more. In an open letter timed to the World Economic Forum in Davos, close to 400 millionaires and billionaires from two dozen countries urged world leaders to hike taxes on the ultra-wealthy, arguing extreme fortunes are warping politics, deepening inequality, and worsening the climate crisis. Signatories include actor-director Mark Ruffalo, musician Brian Eno, and philanthropist and film producer Abigail Disney, per the Guardian. "A handful of global oligarchs," the letter claims, have effectively captured democracies around the globe, constrained the media, tightened control over technology, and "accelerated the breakdown of our planet."
The group says the wealth gap has become so severe that even beneficiaries of the current system see it as dangerous. "When even millionaires, like us, recognize that extreme wealth has cost everyone else everything else," the letter states, "there can be no doubt that society is dangerously teetering off the edge of a precipice." Their call comes as Oxfam reports the number of billionaires worldwide has topped 3,000 for the first time, with what it describes as a record surge in billionaire wealth. The richest 1%, Oxfam says, now controls three times more wealth than all public assets combined.
New polling suggests many affluent people share these worries. A survey of 3,900 individuals in G20 countries with more than $1 million in assets (not counting their homes), conducted for the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires, revealed that 77% believe the ultra-rich buy political influence. More than 60% saw extreme wealth as a threat to democracy, and about two-thirds believed in higher taxes on the super-rich to fund public services; 17% were opposed.
The debate is playing out against a backdrop in which money and power are increasingly intertwined. Forbes has described President Trump's current Cabinet as the wealthiest in US history, with a combined net worth of $7.5 billion as of last August. Even Trump has said he wouldn't be against ponying up more money in taxes, though he's reluctant to impose those payments on other millionaires, "because a lot of [them] would leave the country," per Business Insider. Oxfam International's executive director, Amitabh Behar, called the present trajectory "obscene" and urged governments to move quickly on taxing the richest, warning that the current gulf between oligarchs and everyone else "is beyond comprehension."
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