Forbes billionaires list shows 'utterly unconscionable' wealth growth of world's richest

Forbes on Tuesday released its latest catalog of, as one economic justice campaigner put it, people who should be regulated "out of existence" as the business magazine unveiled its 2024 Billionaires List, featuring near the top a number of U.S. tech billionaires who have aggressively opposed workers' rights movements and fair taxation.

The magazine reported that the number of worldwide billionaires grew by 141 in the past year, with 2,781 people holding wealth that exceeds $1 billion.

Those people own combined assets of $14.2 trillion, exceeding the gross domestic product of every country in the world except the U.S. and China.

Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH fashion and cosmetics empire in France, currently holds the top slot on the Billionaires List, while Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are No. 2 and No. 3 on the list.

Both Musk and Bezos have garnered international attention in recent years for their companies' illegal anti-union activity, and Tesla and Amazon have both avoided billions of dollars in federal taxes in recent years.

"It is utterly unconscionable that at a time where masses of the world's population are living in dire poverty, a few individuals are allowed to amass staggering wealth," said Daisy Pearson, campaigns and activism officer at Global Justice Now. "This is only possible through exploitation, and their monopolization of wealth and resources further allows them to amass huge power and influence over decisions that affect our everyday lives. Enough is enough—we should be regulating these barons out of existence."

"It is utterly unconscionable that at a time where masses of the world's population are living in dire poverty, a few individuals are allowed to amass staggering wealth."

Chase Peterson-Withorn, wealth editor at Forbes, toldThe Guardian that "the superrich continue to thrive" as people across the planet face higher prices of goods, cost-of-living crises, and the costs associated with increasingly frequent extreme weather events and the climate emergency.

"A record-breaking 14 centibillionaires [$100 billion] have 12-figure fortunes," Peterson-Whithorn said.

Luke Hildyard, executive director of the High Pay Center, told the outlet that the Forbes list, rather than an accounting of those who have earned the most money, "is essentially an annual calculation of how much of the wealth created by the global economy is captured by a tiny caste of oligarchs rather than being used to benefit humanity as a whole."

While the global population is "living through incredibly unequal times, lurching from one crisis to the next," added Robert Palmer, executive director of Tax Justice U.K., the richest people in the world amass "extraordinary levels of wealth."

"World leaders need to ensure the superrich are paying their fair share, for example through introducing wealth taxes," said Palmer. "This would help provide the resources needed to tackle multiple crises from inequality to climate change."