"TaxTheSuperRich" is a protester motto at the Davos forum. Would that end inequality?
The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is underway this week — and there are calls for taxing the extremely rich to address global inequality.
The World Economic Forum meets every January in Davos, Switzerland, to talk about ways to improve life on earth. This year's topics include climate change, artificial intelligence — and taxing the very very rich. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
toggle captionFabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images/AFPHow do we bring equality to the world?
That's a question being debated in the rarefied air of Davos, Switzerland, as billionaires and less wealthy movers and shakers gather at the World Economic Forum to consider the global issues of the day, from climate change to artificial intelligence to poverty. The event is known by the name of the Swiss resort where it's held.
One solution to global poverty is summed up on signs carried by demonstrators. As Reuters reported: "Police moved in to remove around 10 protesters who were blocking two vehicles at the heliport entrance with bright yellow banners saying "TaxTheSuperRich."
That's also a solution put forth in the annual Oxfam report released at the start of Davos, highlighting global inequality.
Facts about billionairesThis year Oxfam's focus is: People who have a billion dollars.
As the report's title indicates, It's not exactly pro-billionaires: "Takers Not Makers."
Oxfam researchers assembled some eye-popping statistics from sources like the UBS Global wealth report, Forbes Real Time Billionaire's list and the Economist along with quotes from academics.
"Billionaire wealth is surging in a world where 2.33 billion people — nearly 29% of the global population — are food insecure. This is evidence of a broken system that is designed to serve the interests of a select few," Amitabh Behar, Executive Director of Oxfam India, wrote on X.
According to the Oxfam report, 204 new billionaires were minted in 2024. That's an average of almost four new billionaires per week. On average, the fortunes of the richest 10 billionaires — eight of whom live in the U.S. — grew by $100 million a day in 2024. If any of the richest 10 billionaire men lost 99% of their wealth, they'd still be a billionaire. The world currently has no trillionaires but five are expected within a decade.
Meanwhile, amid crises caused by conflict, climate change and economic downturns, the number of people living under the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 a day has remained unchanged since 1990 — that's nearly 44% of humanity.
An emphasis in the 2025 Oxfam narrative is the role that family ties play in becoming superrich. "What we're showing this year is just how much of wealth isn't the result of being earned in any conventional sense. A huge piece of that is inheritance. 36% of overall billionaire wealth was inherited in 2023. More billionaires were created through inheritance rather than entrepreneurship. Every single billionaire under 30 inherited their wealth. That means those people are outrageously rich simply because of who their parents were," says Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for Economic and Racial Justice at Oxfam America and a spokesperson for the report.
A call for taxesHere's what Oxfam is calling for: "First, we need policymakers to seriously commit to reducing inequality and they need to tackle the racism, sexism and division that underpin exploitation. Second, we really need to tax extreme wealth."
NPR asked Rajesh Venugopal, associate professor in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science, to weigh in.
"The world should respond by being more attentive to inequality," he says. "If the report has that impact, then it would be effective." But he notes that in reality, Davos was born in the 1990s at the peak of globalization – a time when the Oxfam report had more influence on discussions and solutions to creating a more equitable global economy.
The world is different now. "Davos is not as influential as it once was and the rise of right-wing populist economic policies [like imposing tariffs on trade, opposing global or international trade agreements] indicates that the appetite for the Oxfam report will be very different."
And is taxing the very very rich a viable solution?
"Economically, there's a solid rationale in taxing extreme wealth, to provide governments with the means to fund high quality public services and improve living standards for the poor," Venugopal says. "However, we need to understand the nature of inequality more carefully. The world isn't just made up of rich and poor countries, but of rich and poor people in many countries. As Indians, we won't solve India's problems by pointing to colonial plunder [as the report does] and asking rich countries to pay us back. We need to recognize that India is itself suffering from vast economic and political inequalities, and we need to deal with our own plutocrats."
Other economists raise doubts about the efficacy of taxing the rich to help the poor.
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama is the Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), a non-profit think tank based in Sweden.
He says wealth inequality is impossible to address through taxation because wealth "moves" too easily. "Wealth tax never works because the capital is mobile. You can just move the money abroad. So the U.S. and other economies have incredibly high property taxes instead (you can't move the house). Inheritance tax is a way to tax the rich who inherit assets in addition to their income. "I'm a fan of inheritance tax, but it never works," says Lee-Makiyama. Even places like Switzerland have abolished inheritance tax, he says, because it's easy to avoid. "Taxation is [based] on income and not on accumulated wealth as it should be, so that's the wrong tool to use," he says.
While the Oxfam report is right to focus on global inequality and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, Venugopal has another concern: "The report focuses too much on the economic power of billionaires." He thinks their political power and influence also needs to be addressed – after all, that's why they can escape taxation.
"They have unprecedented power to create and manipulate reality and influence what we think," he says.
The other side of the coinWhich is the opposite of what happens in low-resource communities. If you were to travel the 5,700 miles from Davos to Kibera, a settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, that's often called the world's largest slum, you'd hear testimony to the toll that inequality takes.
While billionaire wealth is surging, for many people, small and basic needs are still not met.
For example, Stella Bosire, a medical doctor, says she's seen how health services have been affected by a lack of funding – making it more difficult for patients to afford everything from kidney dialysis to maternal health care to basic diagnostic tests. "The word hakuna [meaning there is none] has become a tragic refrain in our public health facilities," she says.
Freelance journalist Thomas Bwire contributed to this story from Kenya.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t
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