Fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that urgent action has become essential.
The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026, based on data compiled by 200 researchers, also found that the top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half captures less than 10% of total global earnings.
Wealth – the value of people’s assets – was even more concentrated than income, or earnings from work and investments, the report found, with the richest 10% of the world’s population owning 75% of wealth and the bottom half just 2%.
In almost every region, the top 1% was wealthier than the bottom 90% combined, the report found, with wealth inequality increasing rapidly around the world.
“The result is a world in which a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability,” the authors, led by Ricardo Gómez-Carrera of the Paris School of Economics, wrote.
Suck on that 0.999% of the 1%!
Put a maximum net worth. Every dollar over it equals one punch to the kidneys.
let’s make it “every one million dollar over it” and these greedy fucks would still not survive it.
Great idea in theory.
Curious to know how we implement it in practice
we need to organize. seriously!
It is true that the poorest people have very little money and the wealthiest people have a great deal of money, so the math checks out
Billions of poor people are giving their money every single day to companies owned by rich people, this explains why rich people are getting richer
Does anyone have any ideas how we can stop poor people from giving their money to the rich? Every time they use Google they are given an electric shock ? Every time someone goes to buy something on Amazon they get personally spanked by a local Jeff Bezos lookalike?
Billions of poor people are giving their money
Well… their labor
My proposal is taxing the everloving shit out of the richest people. 50% wealthtax over €20 million (a number I pulled out of my ass, but I think it’s important to not hurt the regular small businesses). If you can’t sell your assets for some reason, the assets are forfeited to be operated or sold by the government, to redistribute the result through welfare and UBI.
And what about thhe poor billionaires who can’t own more than 20 million euro you say? I don’t give a shit. Let them off themselves if it’s impossible to live with.
I have to respond to “with at a 50% wealthtax over 20 million euros” because that is the easy answer
Europe already has a lot of experience with taxing the ultra wealthy
In 1990, about a dozen European countries had a wealth tax, but by 2019, all but three had eliminated the tax because of the difficulties and costs associated with both design and enforcement.[6][7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#In_practice
Normally progressives like to point to Europe for policy success. Not this time. The experiment with the wealth tax in Europe was a failure in many countries. France’s wealth tax contributed to the exodus of an estimated 42,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2012, among other problems. Only last year, French president Emmanuel Macron killed it.
In 1990, twelve countries in Europe had a wealth tax. Today, there are only three: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. According to reports by the OECD and others, there were some clear themes with the policy: it was expensive to administer, it was hard on people with lots of assets but little cash, it distorted saving and investment decisions, it pushed the rich and their money out of the taxing countries—and, perhaps worst of all, it didn’t raise much revenue.
Paris (AFP) – Bernard Arnault, the billionaire boss of the world’s biggest luxury conglomerate LVMH, has picked a fight with the French government by suggesting that companies could flee France for the United States to escape a planned tax hike.
And it’s hard because there will always be another country that wants rich people
Tax transfers to those countries to the ever-loving-shit degree. Want to move money to this tax paradise? Sure. We take 90%. Not on profit. On transfer. Let’s see them work around that. Want to move it to a country that doesn’t have the same rules? Sure. We take 90% of that.
Then they’ll be welcome to fuck right the fuck off, but I absolutely assure you, there is someone willing to start a new company in their place, if the market was previously in the “make you a billionaire” territory, but now the person can “only” accrue €20 million, someone will fill that hole, but that someone won’t be a piece of shit like Jeff Besos, because they won’t be allowed to become that economically powerful. Instead it’ll be 500 smaller companies, all competing for the market.
What happened to the different european wealth taxes is that it was implemented with loopholes as big as the France-England tunnel, and any rich asshole who didn’t feel like paying taxes, could just transfer it somewhere else, and call it an investment. Instead, tax every single cent they move out of the country at 90%. That way they’re forced to invest their money in the country they’re making their money off of. Maybe give them a rebate if they move it within Europe to facilitate growth across the union, let’s tax that at 45% instead then.
That’s because they left giant loopholes in those laws. Like allowing the ultra wealthy to remove their money from the country. They got that money because of the country, they don’t get to then fuck off and take that wealth out of the country. They’re free to leave, the majority of their wealth is not.
And poor nobles can cry me a river, sell the assets. Take the stocks too. The entire idea of shareholders running the company needs to die anyways.
90%
If it’s a free market within the country, the vaccuum created by the wealthy leaving will be filled in by smaller business servicing the same industries.
Big corporations that have wealth concentrating with the top brass and share holders do not add anything of value to the market over cooperatives and other worker owned incentive structures.
Rich people will give their money to enrich themselves or to fuck someone over. But giving their money freely to help humanity? Or accept being taxed? They are seriously homicidally resistant to that.
Off topic, I think billionaires should be required to do the lowest position in their organizations for a month once a year with their net worth assets frozen, their communication with any yes man or enabler being severed for that month, and be forced to live off of that monthly stipend for 1 month and if they get “fired” they cannot retaliate if the firing was in good faith and they lose 65-70% of their stock options for failing to do bare minimum competence.
Then they get imprisoned for taxfraud, and have their wealth confiscated. I no longer give half a shit about those parasites.
I think a year of every five, but ok.
We’ve seen them voluntarily do homeless stints. It’s just not the same thing when you know you’re going back to your mansion in a few weeks. Just fucking tax their wealth bracket out of existence.
Oh I want them taxed, but like I said, they’d rather watch the world burn than be forced to give a dollar.
Then don’t take the dollar, take the fucking hand.
Odds are when asked for the second dollar, it will be a lot more forthcoming.
First you need to put the non-rich in charge and prevent them being bought off by the rich. That’s the hard part, but not impossible.
No comments about the “accept all or reject all and subscribe” really says something about no one ever reading the article. And just to be clear, I’m in full agreement of how fucked this is. It just really stuck out to me. And I highly doubt everyone who commented used some extention, script or service to get past that, I feel pretty confident that almost none did. If most did at least one would have posted a link so everyone else could get the full article.
The fact is money is relative. $100k USD is a lot of money in New Guinea and is not going to buy as much in London. This is why it is perfectly acceptable for someone like Thiel to assemble a private army with his wealth while people starve because they haven’t worked the grind correctly like Musk, Thiel or the Mountbatten-Windsors have /s.
You had me in the first half…
This seems not conducive to the common wellbeing of humanity I think.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Nifty. Each person in that top 0.001% has the combined wealth of 68,333 people just to themselves. That’s a whole ass city.
I feel like numbers at this point just are pointless. It’s like, can we use vocabulary that actually describes the situation instead of updating this every time the decimal point shifts?
Describing it in terms of wealth is kind of dumb. It gives the idea that the systems that caused this (Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism) are the solution. Like, the global South just needs “investment”. The numbers are this bad because of a century of western “investment” in its exploitation the global South.
There isn’t a number attached to this that somehow fixes the problem when we reach it. This is about what essentially amounts to slavery and subjugation of the majority of this planet. The language of these news articles is so passive. Like it’s describing the amount of stars in the galaxy.
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Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life!
But we’ve just been playing all summer.
That’s 80’000 people vs. how much?
the entire bottom half of humanity
So about 4 billion people
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Uh, right. Hey, i ran on fumes yesterday.
according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that ugrgent action ha.cms become essential.
I guarantee you that that 0.001% agrees, there are too many of them, that should be 0.00001% instead
Fuck the rich!
I call for hard limits on personal networth and the worth of companies
No single person should be able to control more than 10M, companies shouldn’t be worth over 1 billion
Anything over that, goes to taxes.
It’s a single basic rule that requires more rules below for sure to ensure it works well, but this should be codified in a world wide constitution.
This way, nobody gets crazy amounts of money, nobody will have to be poor because the government will have a huge income that it can use for universal healthcare, education, universal basic income, etc…
Crime would go down the drain because nobody NEEDS to be a criminal anymore. There will still be a few anti social elements but good luck finding people wanting that life if they can just have a good, safe, and happy life.
Bribery and corruption? How even, and why take the risk?
There is no logical reason why anyone should have to be allowed to control this much wealth.
Investment companies must all be dismantled and all their funds transferred to independent non profit organisations that, again, won’t be able to control more than over a billion. Government can transfer money to these foundations so that loads of people can have investments for startups or whatnot
We’d need similar simple rules for governments too. All governments must be democracies, and all should follow a world constitution where we have a few basic rules that make sure nobody will ever get too much power.
It doesn’t require a lot of changes at the top. Basically these three rules, all the rest flows out of those rules. We can keep capitalism and use it’s raw power to generate resources for everyone.
What this needs is political will, this needs people to want this, need this.
It doesn’t require a lot of changes
All governments must be democracies
I didn’t know World War Three was the simplest way to world peace
No single person should be able to control more than 10M
A small family farm earning less than 350k a year could easily need that in land, capital, etc. just to operate.
But I hear you, somewhere between 10 and 50M would be ideal.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome senator Bernie Sanders
