The latest Oxfam report delivers a stark warning about the direction of the global political economy. In 2025 alone, billionaire wealth surged by $2.5 trillion, pushing total billionaire wealth to $18.3 trillion, the highest level ever recorded. Wealth at the top is now growing three times faster than in previous years, even as poverty reduction stalls and hunger rises. Oxfam calls this not just economic inequality but dangerous political inequality, a world in which the ultra rich increasingly shape laws, media systems, and public policy to serve themselves.

This builds on Oxfam’s earlier finding that the richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom 95% of humanity. The organization describes the moment as one where the shadow of global oligarchy hangs over multilateral institutions, tax cooperation, debt relief efforts, and global public goods. Billionaires are not only accumulating wealth, they are accumulating influence, with an outsize presence in politics, corporate ownership, and media control.

At the same time, another long-term trend has unfolded. Over the last four decades, beginning with Reaganomics in the United States and Thatcherism in the United Kingdom, neoliberal reforms normalized austerity, privatization, and shrinking public welfare. The welfare state was reframed as a burden rather than a foundation of stability and dignity.

This shift was not only economic but moral: Market efficiency displaced social solidarity, and welfare came to be viewed as dependency rather than dignity.

The irony is that once in power, many populist leaders deepen the very insecurity that propelled them to office.

Today the richest 1% have more wealth than the bottom 95% of the world’s population put together, while the welfare state has steadily eroded. What has followed has worsened inequality; fueled resentment; broken trust in state institutions; weakened the social contract; and led to feelings of exclusion, helplessness, and marginalization. The result has been a rise in populist anger and right-wing governments characterized by anti-immigrant sentiment and hostility to multilateralism.

This trajectory has not only reshaped economies, but politics itself. So who is to blame? Is it the right-wing populists who are now eroding democratic norms, or the neoliberal austerity that hollowed out welfare systems long before them. In reality, the link between the two is the helplessness and anger felt by ordinary citizens who feel invisible in a world marked by inequality and social injustice. As Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar notes, being economically poor creates hunger, being politically poor creates........

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