{"id":313636,"date":"2026-03-02T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=313636"},"modified":"2026-02-24T06:41:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T06:41:23","slug":"should-billionaires-have-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/03\/should-billionaires-have-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Billionaires Have It All?"},"content":{"rendered":"

23 Feb 2026 – <\/em>California politics is currently being shaken up thanks to a drive<\/a>, led by the Service Employees International Union, to enact a one-time wealth tax on the state\u2019s billionaires to offset federal cuts to healthcare and support public education and food assistance programs.\u00a0 Campaigning for the measure, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders told an enthusiastic crowd<\/a> that \u201cnever before have so few people had so much wealth and so much power.\u201d\u00a0 In a democratic society, he thundered, \u201cthe billionaire class cannot have it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a message that\u2019s particularly relevant in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

In January 2026, as the World Economic Forum opened in Davos, a report by the charity Oxfam<\/a> revealed increasingly stark economic inequality.\u00a0 One-fourth of the world\u2019s population was afflicted by hunger and nearly half lived in poverty.\u00a0 Meanwhile billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 percent in 2025 to $18.4 trillion\u2015its highest level in history.\u00a0 The world\u2019s 12 richest billionaires, noted Oxfam<\/a>, had more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, more than four billion people.<\/p>\n

According to Forbes<\/em><\/a>, the number of billionaires in the world rose from 140 in 1987 to a record 3,028 in March 2025.\u00a0 Moreover, they continued growing ever richer<\/a>, with the wealth of the top 15 U.S. billionaires increasing during 2025 by over 31 percent.\u00a0 They included Elon Musk ($729 billion), Larry Page ($262 billion), Larry Ellison ($247 billion), Jeff Bezos ($243 billion), and Sergey Brin ($242 billion).<\/p>\n

Although Americans constituted the largest number of billionaires in 2025<\/a> (902, up from 813 in 2024), most hailed from other countries.\u00a0 China<\/a>\u2015despite its ostensible commitment, as a Communist nation, to economic equality\u2015had 450, up from 406 in 2024.\u00a0 If Hong Kong and Macau are included, China had 516 billionaires.\u00a0 China was followed in billionaire numbers<\/a> by India (205), Germany (171), and Russia (140).<\/p>\n

Why, it might be asked, does anyone need billions of dollars?\u00a0 After all, as Oxfam pointed out<\/a> in January 2024, before the surge in billionaire wealth of the last two years, if each of the five richest billionaires were to spend a million dollars a day they would take 476 years on average to exhaust their combined wealth.<\/p>\n

In the case of billionaires, though, needs are easily overwhelmed by desires.\u00a0 According to Forbes<\/em><\/a>, \u201cthe number one must-have item of the super-rich\u201d is the private, luxury jet plane.\u00a0 Although purchase costs usually run no higher than $110 million<\/a>, Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov reportedly spent between $350 and $500 million<\/a> to buy his private jet.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuperyachts\u201d are also in demand among the billionaire class. \u00a0Business Insider<\/em> observed <\/a>in late 2025 that \u201cpalaces at sea have long been a status symbol for the masters of the universe, a place to live a life of excess and network, far removed from the prying eyes of ordinary people.\u201d And \u201cas the rich get richer . . . their boats are getting longer.\u201d\u00a0 Brin, who has a flotilla of yachts, boats, and water toys, cared for by 50 full-time employees, recently purchased Dragonfly<\/em>, a 466-foot superyacht with a glass-bottomed pool, cinema, spa, gym, business deck, and helicopter hangar.\u00a0 Similarly, Bezos recently purchased Koru<\/em>, a $500 million, 417-foot superyacht.<\/p>\n

Billionaires also maintain multiple homes<\/a>.\u00a0 Although Bezos\u2019s two houses covering 28,000 square feet<\/a> on a Seattle lakefront have provided him with his primary home, they constitute just one of his numerous residences.\u00a0 He also owns residential properties in New York City, Washington, DC, Maui, Hawaii, several large estates in California, a 30,000-acre ranch in Texas, and other homes elsewhere\u2014all told, worth more than $578 million. \u00a0One of his most recently-acquired residences<\/a> is located on what is called the \u201cbillionaire bunker,\u201d a luxury island near Miami.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the lives of billionaires are often quite different from those of their less affluent contemporaries. \u00a0Superyachts<\/a> played a very important role in Ellison\u2019s life, and he has purchased several of them<\/a>.\u00a0 His latest<\/a>, Musashi<\/em>, acquired for a reported $160 million, boasts amenities such as an elevator, swimming pool, beauty salon, gym, and basketball court.\u00a0 According to Business Insider<\/em>, Ellison \u201cis known for his extravagant spending . . . and yachting is among his favorite and most expensive hobbies.\u201d He purportedly<\/a> bought 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai (for $300 million), has a real estate portfolio of $1 billion, and has been married five times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Billionaires have also been noted for<\/a> driving $4 million Lamborghini Venenos, acquiring megamansions for their horses, taking $80,000 \u201csafaris\u201d in private jets, purchasing gold toothpicks, creating megaclosets the size of homes, covering their staircases in gold, and building luxury survival bunkers.\u00a0 Even as people around the world struggled to afford basic necessities, Bezos\u2019s Blue Origin company launched the super-rich and their friends on joyrides into space<\/a>, while billionaires funded schemes<\/a> to extend their lives and secure immortality.<\/p>\n

Given their immense wealth, billionaires have enormous influence in politics.\u00a0 During the U.S. federal elections of 2024<\/a>, 100 billionaire families poured a record-breaking $2.6 billion into the campaigns\u2015one out of every six dollars in total contributions.\u00a0 As the super-rich usually desire to safeguard or enhance their wealth, some 70 percent of this billionaire funding went to the Republicans and only 23 percent to the Democrats.\u00a0 Symptomatically, Elon Musk, the world\u2019s richest individual, donated a record-breaking $268 million to the Republican campaign.\u00a0 This proved an excellent investment, for after Donald Trump returned to the White House, he not only appointed Musk a sort of co-president<\/a>, but instituted policies to aid the wealthy that made U.S. billionaires $1.5 trillion richer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Numerous billionaires\u2015authoritarian, convinced of their innate superiority, and eager to acquire further wealth and power\u2015direct national governments.\u00a0 In late 2025, they included<\/a> Donald Trump (USA, $6.1 billion); Vladimir Putin (Russia, $70 billion); Kim Jong Un (North Korea, $5 billion); Xi Jinping (China, $1.5 billion); Mohammed bin Salman (Saudi Arabia, $25 billion); and other assorted potentates, mostly from oil-rich nations.<\/p>\n

Should billionaires have it all?\u00a0 Not if we want a democratic society.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/em><\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxfam: One-fourth of the world\u2019s population is afflicted by hunger and nearly half live in poverty.\u00a0 Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 percent in 2025 to $18.4 trillion\u2015its highest level in history.\u00a0 The world\u2019s 12 richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, over four billion people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":253317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3225,232,3614,555,1966,1624,996,1213],"class_list":["post-313636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism","tag-billionaires","tag-capitalism","tag-disaster-capitalism","tag-elites","tag-hunger","tag-mafia","tag-poverty","tag-super-rich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313637,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313636\/revisions\/313637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}