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.
The French Revolution was a massive uprising in France from 1789 to 1799, driven by anger over inequality, heavy taxes, and the extravagant lifestyle of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The monarchy’s indifference to the suffering of ordinary people—while they lived in luxury—sparked outrage.
The revolution began with the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny, and led to radical changes: the monarchy was abolished, the king and queen were executed, and France became a republic. It was a chaotic time, with ideals of liberty and equality clashing against violence and instability.
In short, it was a dramatic lesson in what happens when leaders ignore the needs of their people.
It’s gone from can’t everyone just pay your fair share of taxes?
To can’t we at least tax the rich?
How about just the 1%?
Ok…, how about just the 0.001%?
And then somehow conservatives leaders will convince a voter base to take to the streets with pitchforks and torches, claiming it’s tyranny, then once they’re elected, the leaders will still tax the fucking voter base.
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.
Guillotines are surprisingly cheap to build.
The implicit song here goes hard
.22lr even cheaper and less assembly required
Would need to be able to penetrate their thick skulls.
Maybe we should use a higher caliber bullet?
Remind me again how capitalism isn’t the problem? lmao
This seems not conducive to the common wellbeing of humanity I think.
People might think that the extremity is a good thing as it will force change, which may be true, but realistically the world will be in for an extended period of conflict/war/suffering first and that period will probably last the rest of our lives.
Boomers hit that sweet spot. Now they get to check out as things are about to get real bad. Not that boomers everywhere in the world had it good. But a lot of them did.
Boomers hit that sweet spot.
American boomers, maybe. The 60s/70s was real shit for most of the Third World.
Much of our modern Economic Anxiety driving MAGA and the reactionary insanity of our foreign policy is these same Boomers being forced to live in a world that isn’t just the car dealerships in Detroit commanding the global economy.
For the 90s Kids, life outside the US hasn’t been this good in a century or more. Whether you’re in Bogota, Berlin, Beijing, or Bankok, it’s a time of unprecedented plenty.
The fact that America isn’t this shining city on a hill anymore is what Trumpsters find so galling.
For the 90s Kids, life outside the US hasn’t been this good in a century or more. Whether you’re in Bogota, Berlin, Beijing, or Bankok, it’s a time of unprecedented plenty.
In some places, like south america, things have not been that great since the start of a wave of right wing governments rising, unfortunately…
One reason why Buenos Aires didn’t make the list.
I see what you mean, in terms of democracy being a problem capitalism is trying to solve and, also, that the rich and powerful will never allow us to simply vote away their ill-gotten wealth and power.
I don’t think that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try though or just lament that we were born too late though.
If enough people wanted to, we could change things very quickly. I don’t see why that would mean we would have to have those all of those things, let alone for an extended period. Really, you’re rationalising a status quo bias.
Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is poor.
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. (G. K. Chesterton)
Yet fewer people are poor because we instituted capitalist policies. Moving away from mercantilism was a great idea and benefitted most to a greater degree than mercantilism provides. Now we need to move beyond capitalism to address the failures of capitalism.
Because of capitalist policies or because of advancements in science, engineering, and medicine culminating around the same time that just happened to coincide with capitalism’s birth?
Capitalism only benefits capitalists.
Fewer people are poor despite the capitalists, not because of.
Their giant hoards of wealth exemplify how many more could have been pulled out of poverty in the last 100-150 years.
Because directing more wealth away from feudal authorities/noble families to private individuals was good for increasing wealth distribution. This happened at different times in different places.
Capitalism only benefits capitalists
Nah, it can benefit the rank and file provided the wealth was poorly distributed before by creating more jobs. This is exactly what happened when it was adopted by most nations in the 19th century.
Fewer people are poor despite the capitalists, not because of.
China’s for-profit business investments in Africa since 2000 are an example if capitalist policies bringing people out of poverty. Im not sure your claim has the validity you think it does.
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.
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
Suck on that 0.999% of the 1%!
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…
Does that mean, in a theoretical world where wealth is by all means easily distributed, you’ve got a mere 0.001% that could triple the per-individual wealth of half of the worlds population—if we just took theirs and passed it out?
I’ve heard philosophers say, it’s a figure of authority’s continuous responsibility to justify its existence. Given, wealth is influence and influence is authority, should we not audit cases where wealth is so concentrated and ask ourselves question like ”how is this contributing to the benefit of all?”
I’d.argue, we shouldn’t allow such concentration of wealth in the first place—meaning there should be a preventative plan that Just Works. This can be compatible with whatever else you want, free markets or not. Be it a stronger progressive tax or a cultural change toward worker collectives owning the means to production, there just shouldn’t be such wealthy entities.
The concentration on wealth leads to concentration of influence, meaning politics and media. We’ve had a shrinking number of independent major news organizations since the 1980s. A 1983 analysis showed that about 50 companies “controlled more than half” of U.S. media. Today, there are estimates of a handful of people owning the vast majority. Not to mention, they can apparently choose to purchase massive Social Media platforms (like Twitter) immediately before an election.
Right now, though, we have this problem where such silos already exist. They use their influence, vast as it is, to protect and enrich themselves—PACs, Super PACs, gratuities, lobbying firms, and more recently meme coins. All acting as a conduit to influence politics and legislation. We can’t make progress while these issues continue to stand in our way, can we? So, what do you do?
60,000 is way to many. They need to be able to fit on a giga yacht.
And then we make an artificial reef out of it
The coral all died.
Some pressing and stomping and they will nicely fit to any rusted sea tanker.
More like eventually building their own Elysium.
Then we can shoot the fucker down and take them all out in one fell swoop. What a beautiful sunrise that would make.
I started to feel that’s a mathematical issue, not an economic issue. Since the internet is a thing, a person’s influence and wealth can increase exponentially(benefiting from the networking effect aka power law), while the best tax law can do is still linear.
We need a tax law that grows exponentially. After certain points, it should collect almost 100% of the “controllable assets” (assets you can control, not necessarily owed).
But of course, we will never get it. People who have the will to climb the ladder tend to have less empathy for the masses, and they need to pay back to their stakeholders to help them get on top. It’s another paradox we need to deal with.
TBH the only thing that can fix humanity is extraterrestrial life lol.
I would call it systemic, in fact I’d argue it’s the central flaw of capitalism (but one that imo can be mostly fixed with heavy regulation and taxes scaling to near 100% as you say).
When wealth = power, those with wealth will always attract even more wealth.
TBH the only thing that can fix humanity is extraterrestrial life lol.
It’s an overused statement by now but it seems worth repeating: many people find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
a tax law that grows exponentially
We’ve had this before, and can again. Look up FDR-era marginal rates.
Followed through until the doom and gloom. Organize!
