On Monday, the world marked two important beginnings: the start of President Donald Trump’s second term and the 55th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – better known as simply “Davos.” What we witnessed of the attendees at one event made us all the more confident in our demands of the attendees at the other.
This year’s Davos will bring together around 3,000 global elites from the worlds of business, academia, politics, and civil society. It’s now three days into the exclusive five-day conference, and Trump’s inauguration has unsurprisingly been getting the most buzz among attendees. While they are reportedly preoccupied with promises that Trump has made regarding tariffs, trade, and deregulation, we think that they should devote more time to discussing the unique threat that Trump and his billionaire administration pose to democracies worldwide – and find the political will to do something about it before it’s too late.
We’ve known that America is an oligarchy for a long time now, as policies overwhelmingly reflect the preferences and interests of a small slice of rich individuals like us. But what we saw at Trump’s inauguration on Monday made this clearer than ever. Watching the president get sworn in flanked by the three wealthiest men on the planet – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg – left no doubt who will (and already does) have the most sway in Trump’s second term. Trump may claim to be the champion of working people, but one look at the VIP section of his inauguration should set the record straight that Trump is a billionaires’ man.
The World Economic Forum’s stated mission is to improve the state of the world. If they want to achieve that lofty goal, the Davos attendees must come out of their conference with a plan as to how they are going to check Trump and his fellow oligarchs’ worst impulses, safeguard democracies, and prevent the world from slipping further and further into authoritarian hands.
If they’re looking for a place to start, we’ll make it easy for them: tax rich people like us.
Today, along with several of our allies, we released two products that we hope will inspire the world leaders at Davos to do just that. The first is a letter campaign, We Must Draw The Line, that we organized along with Patriotic Millionaires UK, Oxfam, Millionaires for Humanity, and taxmenow. Over 370 millionaires and billionaires from 22 countries signed our open letter calling on world leaders at Davos to tackle the corrosive impact of extreme wealth on our democracies and broader society by taxing the super rich. Signers come from a variety of backgrounds and are investors, inheritors, business owners and executives, authors, and more. Notable signers include Abigail Disney (Patriotic Millionaire member and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker); Brian Eno (musician); Richard Curtis (British screenwriter and director of films like Love Actually and Notting Hill); and Marlene Engelhorn (Austrian activist and co-founder of taxmenow).
The letter states, “Wealth is no longer simply about worth. It is about control. If you, our elected leaders, continue to neglect the crisis of wealth extremism, the fractured foundations of our hard-won democracies will face further harm.” Read the full letter and see the full list of signers HERE.
Our second product is a poll that our organization commissioned among G20 millionaires. Conducted by Survation between November and December 2024, the poll surveyed 2,902 individuals from G20 countries with more than $1 million in investable assets, excluding their homes, on their attitudes towards extreme wealth. The results confirmed that we aren’t alone among our peers in being concerned about inequality.
Key findings of the poll include:
- 55 percent believe extreme wealth is a threat to democracy
- 55 percent do not believe political leaders have the will to tackle extreme wealth
- 63 percent believe that the role the super rich will play in Donald Trump’s presidency is a threat to global stability
- 67 percent believe that the super rich interfered inappropriately in the 2024 US election
- 71 percent think that the super rich disproportionately influence public opinion through control of social media platforms
- 72 percent think that the super rich disproportionately influence public opinion through control of the media
- 72 percent are in favor of increasing taxes on the super rich to help reduce inequality and invest in public services
- 75 percent think that the super rich buy political influence
Our Davos products come on the heels of the publication of a bombshell report on inequality – Takers, Not Makers – from our allies at Oxfam. Their findings really drive home the alarming state of extreme wealth around the world, so we wanted to share them with you as well:
- In 2024, billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. Billionaires’ combined wealth is now $15 trillion, which is larger than the GDP of every country except for the US and China.
- In 2024, 204 new billionaires were minted – nearly four every week. There are now 2,769 billionaires in the world, with 813 of them from the US.
- The wealth of the world’s ten richest people grew on average by almost $100 million a day last year. Even if they lost 99% of their wealth, they would still be billionaires.
- Meanwhile, according to World Bank data, the number of people living in poverty has barely improved since 1990.
- Oxfam predicts that there will be at least five trillionaires a decade from now.
- 60% of billionaire wealth is now derived from inheritance, monopoly power, or crony connections. In other words, billionaire wealth is largely unmerited.
Davos has been around for some time, but to our knowledge, no meaningful or real policy changes have ever resulted from their elite parade of panels, lectures, and exclusive parties. That needs to change, and it needs to change now. With Trump back in power and extreme wealth threatening democratic society as we know it, world leaders are running out of time to act.
We’ll close by sharing what one of our members, Abigail Disney, had to say about Trump’s inauguration and Davos: “It’s easy to see the election of a figure like Donald Trump as an aberration, but that’s not the case. Donald Trump – along with his so-called ‘first buddy,’ Elon Musk – is the final and inevitable conclusion of decades of inaction on the part of world leaders to put a check on extreme inequality. It’s hard to be optimistic about what lies ahead over the next four years – and maybe more – but if officials want to do something to ensure the stability of our democracies, they need only find the political resolve to once and for all tax wealthy people like me.”