Davos: haro on the oligarchy of the ultra-rich

After Joe Biden, a leading NGO denounced on Monday the emergence of an “oligarchy” of billionaires dangerous for democracy, who are taking advantage of the return to the White House of Donald Trump, just before the opening of the meeting traditional for the rich and powerful in Davos.

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps resort opens Monday evening, at the time of the inauguration ceremony of the 47th American president in Washington, where the richest men in the world are expected.

“A new aristocratic oligarchy, heir to trillions, exercises sprawling power over our political and economic systems,” denounced Oxfam on Monday in its report on inequalities, which notes an increase in wealth from year to year. super-rich.

“The crown jewel in this oligarchy is a billionaire president, supported and bought by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and running the world’s largest economy,” criticizes Amitabh Behar, the executive director of long.

The boss of the automobile manufacturer Tesla and the space company SpaceX, also owner of the social network X, largely financed Donald Trump’s campaign and obtained an extra-governmental mission to cut public spending.

The outgoing President of the United States Joe Biden himself deplored the mix between financial and political interests, evoking the appearance of a “technological-industrial complex” and saying he feared seeing America fall into the hands of a “ oligarchy”.

According to Oxfam, the fortunes of billionaires soared last year by 2,000 billion dollars globally, or three times more than in 2023, to reach 15,000 billion. And “the policies defended by President Trump should cause inequalities to soar,” warns the NGO.

“Tax the rich” was one of the slogans of demonstrators who blocked the access road to Davos on Sunday to protest against the World Economic Forum meeting. Several hundred were evicted by the police, according to the Keystone-ATS agency.

“The World Economic Forum symbolizes the power that rich people like me hold,” Austrian Marlene Engelhorn, who last year redistributed her inheritance of 25 million euros to various organizations, told AFP.

“Simply because we were born millionaires, or because we were lucky once… we can now influence politicians around the world with our political preferences,” she said.

Oxfam calculates that five men can claim to have a fortune of 1,000 billion dollars within ten years, when “the number of people trapped in poverty has barely changed since 1990”.

A thousand billion is already the combined fortune of the four richest men in the world, all Americans and from tech: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) and Larry Ellison (Oracle) .

The first three, expected Monday at the inauguration ceremony, “today have more wealth than the poorest half of American society,” criticized Bernie Sanders, a figure of the left in the United States.

In the United States, “we are in the situation of being able to buy a country,” denounced the boss of Oxfam France, Cécile Duflot, during a press conference.

Elon Musk has also been involved in political debates in the United Kingdom and Germany in recent weeks.

Donald Trump has appointed other billionaires to his new administration, and wealthy businessmen and women to positions of ambassadors or directors of federal agencies.

Their common point is often to have contributed financially to his campaign.

“I don’t want to live in a country with a handful of rich people and a lot of poor people,” Morris Pearl, a New York retiree who had a career in finance and is part of of “patriotic millionaires”, who demand to be taxed more. “I fear we will face civil unrest if we don’t change things.”

More than 60 heads of state and government are expected in Davos this week, culminating on Thursday with a videoconference intervention by Donald Trump.