Should billionaires have it all?

Should billionaires have it all?

by Lawrence S. Wittner 

977 words

California politics is currently being shaken up thanks to a drive, led by the Service Employees International Union, to enact a one-time wealth tax on the state’s billionaires to offset federal cuts to healthcare and support public education and food assistance programs. Campaigning for the measure, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders told an enthusiastic crowd that “never before have so few people had so much wealth and so much power.” In a democratic society, he thundered, “the billionaire class cannot have it all.”

It’s a message that’s particularly relevant in today’s world.

In January 2026, as the World Economic Forum opened in Davos, a report by the charity Oxfam revealed increasingly stark economic inequality. One-fourth of the world’s population was afflicted by hunger and nearly half lived in poverty. Meanwhile billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 percent in 2025 to $18.4 trillion?its highest level in history. The world’s 12 richest billionaires, noted Oxfam, had more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, more than four billion people. 

According to Forbes, the number of billionaires in the world rose from 140 in 1987 to a record 3,028 in March 2025. Moreover, they continued growing ever richer, with the wealth of the top 15 U.S. billionaires increasing during 2025 by over 31 percent. They included Elon Musk ($729 billion), Larry Page ($262 billion), Larry Ellison ($247 billion), Jeff Bezos ($243 billion), and Sergey Brin ($242 billion).

Although Americans constituted the largest number of billionaires in 2025 (902, up from 813 in 2024), most hailed from other countries. China?despite its ostensible commitment, as a Communist nation, to economic equality?had 450, up from 406 in 2024. If Hong Kong and Macau are included, China had 516 billionaires. China was followed in billionaire numbers by India (205), Germany (171), and Russia (140).

Why, it might be asked, does anyone need billions of dollars? After all, as Oxfam pointed out in January 2024, before the surge in billionaire wealth of the last two years, if each of the five richest billionaires were to spend a million dollars a day they would take 476 years on average to exhaust their combined wealth.

In the case of billionaires, though, needs are easily overwhelmed by desires. According to Forbes, “the number one must-have item of the super-rich” is the private, luxury jet plane. Although purchase costs usually run no higher than $110 million, Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov reportedly spent between $350 and $500 million to buy his private jet.

“Superyachts” are also in demand among the billionaire class. Business Insider observed in late 2025 that “palaces at sea have long been a status symbol for the masters of the universe, a place to live a life of excess and network, far removed from the prying eyes of ordinary people.” And “as the rich get richer . . . their boats are getting longer.” Brin, who has a flotilla of yachts, boats, and water toys, cared for by 50 full-time employees, recently purchased Dragonfly, a 466-foot superyacht with a glass-bottomed pool, cinema, spa, gym, business deck, and helicopter hangar. Similarly, Bezos recently purchased Koru, a $500 million, 417-foot superyacht.

Billionaires also maintain multiple homes. Although Bezos’s two houses covering 28,000 square feet on a Seattle lakefront have provided him with his primary home, they constitute just one of his numerous residences. He also owns residential properties in New York City; Washington, DC; Maui, Hawaii, several large estates in California, a 30,000-acre ranch in Texas, and other homes elsewhere—all told, worth more than $578 million. One of his most recently-acquired residences is located on what is called the “billionaire bunker,” a luxury island near Miami.

Indeed, the lives of billionaires are often quite different from those of their less affluent contemporaries. Superyachtsplayed a very important role in Ellison’s life, and he has purchased several of them. His latest, Musashi, acquired for a reported $160 million, boasts amenities such as an elevator, swimming pool, beauty salon, gym, and basketball court. According to Business Insider, Ellison “is known for his extravagant spending . . . and yachting is among his favorite and most expensive hobbies.” He purportedly bought 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai (for $300 million), has a real estate portfolio of $1 billion, and has been married five times.

Billionaires have also been noted for driving $4 million Lamborghini Venenos, acquiring megamansions for their horses, taking $80,000 “safaris” in private jets, purchasing gold toothpicks, creating megaclosets the size of homes, covering their staircases in gold, and building luxury survival bunkers. Even as people around the world struggled to afford basic necessities, Bezos’s Blue Origin company launched the super-rich and their friends on joyrides into space, while billionaires funded schemesto extend their lives and secure immortality.

Given their immense wealth, billionaires have enormous influence in politics. During the U.S. federal elections of 2024, 100 billionaire families poured a record-breaking $2.6 billion into the campaigns?one out of every six dollars in total contributions. As the super-rich usually desire to safeguard or enhance their wealth, some 70 percent of this billionaire funding went to the Republicans and only 23 percent to the Democrats. Symptomatically, Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, donated a record-breaking $268 million to the Republican campaign. This proved an excellent investment, for after Donald Trump returned to the White House, he not only appointed Musk a sort of co-president, but instituted policies to aid the wealthy that made U.S. billionaires $1.5 trillion richer.

Numerous billionaires?authoritarian, convinced of their innate superiority, and eager to acquire further wealth and power?direct national governments. In late 2025, they included Donald Trump (USA, $6.1 billion); Vladimir Putin (Russia, $70 billion); Kim Jong Un (North Korea, $5 billion); Xi Jinping (China, $1.5 billion); Mohammed bin Salman (Saudi Arabia, $25 billion); and other assorted potentates, mostly from oil-rich nations.

Should billionaires have it all? Not if we want a democratic society.

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Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).