Amid widespread hunger, poverty and war, the wealth of billionaires worldwide increased by $2 trillion in 2024. According to Oxfam’s latest report, their combined value grew from $13 trillion to $15 trillion. This is three times faster compared to 2023.

In 2024, 204 new billionaires emerged. Today there are 2,769 billionaires worldwide. Many of them (60%) amassed wealth not through production, but from inheritance, chronyism and corruption, and monopoly of power. Billionaires “earn” an average of $100 million per day.

American billionaires Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla/Space X’s Elon Musk, Meta/Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Elison, and French billionaire Bernard Arnault remained on the list.

Last year, Oxfam’s list included bourgeoisie-compradors Manuel Villar with a wealth of $8.3 billion; Enrique Razon with a total of $6.7 billion and the Sy brothers with a unified value of $12.5 billion. Oxfam said that the value of the nine richest Filipinos is larger compared to the amount earned by half of the population.

On the other hand, about 692 million citizens worldwide lived in extreme poverty in 2024. This number does not yet include the millions of people who have been evicted and are suffering from hunger caused by imperialist wars and armed conflicts such as Gaza and Syria. The number of people living in poverty has not changed, estimated at 3.6 billion or 44% of the world’s population.

Amid all this, many groups, including progressive groups in the Philippines, have continued to call for the imposition of a wealth tax.