The richest 1% just got richer

Get ready for the world’s first trillionaires

Move over billionaires. The first trillionaires are on their way.

Five people are expected to amass at least $1 trillion in wealth within the next decade, if current trends continue, according to Oxfam’s annual inequality report, released Sunday. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person worth more than $430 billion, should cross the mark in just under five years.

He will soon be joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and family.

The Oxfam report, which draws on data compiled by Forbes, is timed to coincide with the kickoff of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, an elite gathering of some of the richest people and world leaders. Its release also comes the day before billionaire President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

2024 was a very lucrative year for the world’s wealthiest individuals and families, fueled in part by a soaring US stock market, Oxfam found. Their net worth expanded so quickly that Oxfam revised its estimate from last year that only one trillionaire would be crowned in the next decade.

“That’s an unimaginable amount,” Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead at Oxfam America, said of $1 trillion. “This extreme inequality is nothing to celebrate.”

Elon Musk has backed the far right in Germany while perpetrating terrible falsehoods against UK Prime Minister from Tommy Robinson with allegations of gang rapes by British Pakistani men.

His influence – simply because he’s the richest man on the planet – is so enormous because Trump worships money more than any other factor.

America was always a Military Industrial Complex death machine but now Trump’s United States of Wounded Masculinity has elected a naked Plutocracy…

Trump is stacking his White House roster with uber-rich backers

• President-elect Donald Trump is filling his next administration with billionaires and other mega-wealthy figures.
• The richest by far is Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead a bespoke advisory group tasked with slashing purported government waste.
• Some of Trump’s most affluent other picks include Warren Stephens, Stephen Feinberg, Kelly Loeffler, Jared Isaacman, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Scott Bessent and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Donald Trump’s first administration was chock full of super-rich figures whose combined wealth exceeded $5 billion, marking an unprecedented marriage of money and executive power.

Trump’s second term could make that total look like chump change.

More than half a dozen of the Republican president-elect’s picks for his incoming administration are either confirmed billionaires or widely speculated to be. Numerous others are multi- or centimillionaires.

The richest by far is Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead a bespoke advisory group tasked with slashing purported government waste.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is the world’s wealthiest person, with estimates placing his net worth above $346 billion and as high as $362 billion.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate working with Musk on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is worth $1 billion, according to Forbes.

The nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness last month estimated that the average net worth among Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and his top appointees is $616 million.

For comparison, Forbes estimated the total net worth of President Joe Biden’s entire Cabinet at $118 million. And the tax group’s analysis is likely a low-ball estimate, since it came before Trump announced a slew of other highly affluent picks.

In the past week, he has picked billionaire financial services CEO Warren Stephens as his ambassador to the UK, billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg as deputy defense secretary, and venture capitalist David Sacks as his crypto czar.

Trump also picked Kelly Loeffler, a former U.S. senator who was reportedly considered the likely richest person on Capitol Hill while in office, to lead the Small Business Administration.

The same day, he chose billionaire CEO Jared Isaacman to head NASA.

Over the weekend, he selected Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as his choice for U.S. ambassador to France.

The newcomers join an array of other super-wealthy Cabinet picks, including billionaire Howard Lutnick for Commerce secretary, WWE Co-founder Linda McMahon for Education secretary and Scott Bessent for Treasury secretary.

Trump also has picked billionaire Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, as a top Middle East advisor.

And Trump chose Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Oz, as of 2022, was worth as much as $300 million, according to a New York Times analysis of a financial disclosure Oz filed during his failed bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

…Trump’s brand of Orange Fascism has used the UNDERmensch to empower the UBERmensch.

Trump has appointed the most Ghoulish Cavalcade of Political Circus Freaks imaginable to his Cabinet.

Back in NZ we are only beginning to appreciate the new plutocracy…

How can NZ regulate the escalating power of the global tech titans?

The new tech “oligarchy” now operates beyond the control of most governments. Alexandra Andhov asks how a nation as small as New Zealand can regulate the power of massive forces such as Meta, Google and X Corp.

…while launching an attack on arresting homeless people for Trolley’s in Rotorua…

Rotorua police’s Operation Trolley prompts political war of words

A political war of words has erupted over the police’s Operation Trolley targeting Rotorua’s homeless trolley-users, with Waiariki MP Rawiri Waititi calling it a “direct attack” by the Government on impoverished people.

But the three-day police operation – which saw 13 people arrested, 45 trolleys returned to stores and 19 trespass orders issued – has been backed by Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell and two MPs.

Tapsell said ratepayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for cleaning up after the homeless, while Rotorua MP Todd McClay said Waititi’s comments were out of touch with how locals were feeling, and Police Minister Mark Mitchell said police were enforcing the law.

A police statement said that while being homeless was not a crime, police had received complaints about homeless in the CBD intimidating other people with trolleys.

Police would not tolerate anti-social or unlawful behaviour and were committed to ensuring people in the CBD felt safe.

…charming.

The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.

We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.

Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.

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