A stark photograph from Donald Trump's 2025 presidential inauguration in Washington serves as a powerful symbol of our political era. Captured by Getty Images, it shows tech and business titans Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk in attendance, visually cementing the alliance between extreme wealth and political power.
The Staggering Scale of Global Inequality
According to the World Inequality Report (WIR) 2026, the core political issue of our time is the extreme concentration of wealth. The data is breathtaking: approximately 56,000 individuals – a mere 0.001% of the global population – now control three times more wealth than the poorest 50% of humanity combined. This imbalance is not a distant phenomenon; it afflicts the United Kingdom directly, where 50 families possess more wealth than the bottom half of the UK population.
The growth of these fortunes is relentless. Oxfam's 2024 figures show the wealth of the world's 2,769 billionaires surged by $2 trillion. To contextualise that sum, total global spending on international aid was projected to be under $186 billion – less than a tenth of that single-year increase for the ultra-rich. In the UK, billionaires have, on average, become over 1,000% richer since 1990, primarily through property, inheritance, and financial assets, effectively growing their wealth at the expense of society.
How Extreme Wealth Corrodes Democracy and the Planet
This concentration of resources distorts every facet of policy, from democracy to environmental action. Political movements, such as those led by Donald Trump, often act as avatars for elite interests, seizing resources and undermining institutions. The environmental cost is particularly severe. The WIR indicates the richest 1% of the global population are responsible for 41% of greenhouse gas emissions from private capital ownership – nearly double the emissions of the bottom 90%. Another study reveals that through consumption alone, the wealthiest 1% produce as many emissions as the poorest two-thirds of humanity.
Decades of research by academics Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson confirm that higher inequality leads to a host of social ills, including worse public health, higher crime, lower educational attainment, and increased status anxiety. It fosters a predatory 'Epstein class' mentality that views others as 'non-player characters', eroding our common humanity.
The Great Divide: Public Will vs. Political Inaction
Here lies the fundamental contradiction of modern politics. Polling by the Pew Research Center across 36 nations found that 84% of people see economic inequality as a major problem, with 86% blaming the political influence of the rich. In the UK, a YouGov poll showed 75% of the public supports a wealth tax on fortunes above £10 million, with only 13% opposed.
Yet, the political class overwhelmingly sides with the wealthy minority. The manifestos of major parties, even those historically of the left, show no serious intent to challenge billionaire power. When pressed, UK ministers offer two feeble excuses for rejecting a wealth tax: that it won't raise much revenue, and that the ultra-rich will flee.
These arguments collapse under scrutiny. The revenue potential is debated, but the primary benefits of a wealth tax are fairness and reducing oligarchic power. The WIR notes that effective income tax rates fall sharply for billionaires, undermining trust in the entire system. As for flight, the logical response is international cooperation on tax avoidance. Tellingly, when 125 nations backed a global measure, Keir Starmer's government was one of only nine that opposed it. The conclusion is inescapable: governments don't tax the ultra-rich because they choose not to.
This dynamic is reinforced by a media landscape dominated by billionaire proprietors, who stoke culture wars and blame marginalised groups to divert attention from the true architects of dysfunction. The battle for a fairer society must begin with political parties making a clear, unequivocal choice: they either represent the great majority of citizens or the tiny, ultra-wealthy minority. They cannot do both.
