Wealth of the Swiss billionaires increased by 52,2 percent after pandemic

Hardly any other country has so many rich people. The country has 65 095 people with net assets equivalent to at least $5 million and 4 520 people with assets of $50 million or more.

There are also around 40 billionaires – the caste of owners and shareholders of large corporations in a wide variety of areas. They have benefited enormously in the last 10 years, more so than the richest of the rich in almost any other country.

At least that’s the conclusion of the Extreme Wealth report, which was written by the Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam, Patriotic Millionaires and the Fight Inequality Alliance. It analyzed the development of wealth concentration over the last 10 years.

“The wealth of Swiss people who own $50 million or more increased by 4,1 percent between 2012 and 2022,” the report noted. The situation is even worse for billionaires in Switzerland: their wealth has increased by over 52 percent in the past 10 years.

For comparison: Such an increase among billionaires is only topped in India (120 percent), Australia (61 percent), Chile (57 percent), France (59 percent) and Indonesia (70 percent).

The financial power of the Swiss billionaire caste is enormous: “The 23 richest billionaires in Switzerland have more wealth than the bottom half of the population,” according to the report.

The rich have especially benefited from the Covid crisis. “The wealth of the Swiss billionaire class (…) has increased by 52,2 percent since the beginning of the pandemic.”

The super-rich have also increased significantly worldwide in the past decade. Globally, the number of people with a net worth of at least $5 million has increased by 53 percent. The number of people with a net worth of $50 million or more increased by 50,3 percent.

It gets even scarier when it comes to billionaires: “The number of billionaires worldwide has more than doubled in the meantime, or to be more precise, it has increased by 103,5 percent.”

The wealth of the billionaires has grown by 99,6 percent, which corresponds to an increase of more than 5,9 trillion dollars.

What can be done about this increasing concentration of money and power? According to the Institute for Policy Studies and the other organizations involved in the report, the billionaire caste must be asked to pay up. “Estimates from our report show that a progressive wealth tax for the ultra-rich could raise $1,7 trillion in 2022 alone. These revenues could be used to fight global inequality and launch a system of economic democracy.”

The organizations accused the World Economic Forum (WEF), which recently took place in Davos, of not having spoken about the most important crisis of the present: namely the “extreme concentration of wealth and power around the world”.