Oxfam: 10 US billionaires have had their wealth increase 6-fold since 2020

Andre Damon

On Monday, the charity Oxfam published a report on the growth of social inequality in the United States, titled “Unequal: The Rise of a New American Oligarchy.”

The report notes that the “past year has been indelibly shaped by concentrated wealth and power.” It cites data showing that in the past 12 months alone, the 10 richest US billionaires got approximately $700 billion richer. Over this period, their wealth grew by a staggering 40 percent, from $1.79 trillion to $2.5 trillion.

The publication of the Oxfam report came just one day after the Trump administration slashed food stamp benefits for tens of millions of American households. This happened as US President Trump pressed ahead with building himself a massive ballroom in the White House, and his billionaire friends threw a “Great Gatsby”-themed party for themselves at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the weekend.

The domination of the United States by a parasitic oligarchy, whose seat of power is in the White House, is on display for everyone to see.

But the Oxfam report makes clear that, however violent the upward redistribution of wealth being carried out under Trump, it is the product of decades of austerity and pro-corporate policies carried out by both parties. As the report declares, “The story does not begin in 2025.”

Returning to the 10 richest men in America, the Oxfam report notes, “Since 2020, their inflation-adjusted wealth is up 526%.” In other words, from March 2020 through the present, the wealth of these 10 individuals collectively increased six-fold.

A case in point is Elon Musk, whose wealth stood at $33 billion in March 2020, but it has since surged to $469 billion, a 14-fold increase.

Larry Ellison, number two on the list, saw his wealth increase from $54 billion in March 2020 to $323 billion, a six-fold increase. The wealth of Jeff Bezos, number three on the list, increased from $126 billion in March 2020 to $265 billion today.

The increase in wealth is driven by a relentless speculative growth of share values on Wall Street. The Oxfam report noted that “In 2025, the share of assets owned by the top 0.1 percent hit its highest on record since the Federal Reserve began publishing data in 1989 (12.6%), as did their share of the stock market (24%).”

In 1989, the top 0.1 percent of households controlled 8.6 percent of wealth, compared to 13.9 percent today. By contrast, the share of wealth controlled by the bottom 50 percent of American society has fallen from 3.5 percent in 1989 to 2.5 percent today.

In other words, the top 0.1 percent of US households, amounting to just over 100,000 people, controls six times more wealth than the 64 million households at the bottom of society.

In fact, citing figures from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the Oxfam report notes that “The richest 0.0001% control a greater share of wealth than in the Gilded Age, an era of US history defined by extreme inequality.”

The report added, “The richest 1% own half the stock market (49.9%), while the bottom half of the US owns just 1.1% of the stock market.”

The report correctly warns that the Trump administration is carrying out policies that will massively expand social inequality. It warns that “the Trump administration—largely with the support of Republicans in Congress—has moved with staggering speed and scale to carry out a relentless attack on working-class families and use the power of the office to enrich the wealthy and well-connected.”

Oxfam notes that “The recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will reduce the tax bill of the highest-earning 0.1% by an estimated $311,000 in 2027, while the lowest-income households—those making less than $15,000 annually—are expected to face tax increases.”

But as the Oxfam report makes clear, the Trump administration marks an acceleration, at an unprecedented pace, of processes that had been ongoing for decades. “Policymakers have been choosing inequality, and those choices have had bipartisan support,” the study’s author, Rebecca Riddell, told the Guardian. “Policy reforms over the last 40 years, from cuts to taxes and the social safety net to labor issues and beyond, really had the backing of both parties.”

This assessment is true. But it is here that the report tangles itself up in knots. The study’s author correctly points out that the surge in social inequality has occurred over decades, under both political parties. But the report proceeds to make the following assertion:

Gains made during the Biden administration—such as reductions in poverty, improved wages for low-wage workers, and strong antitrust action that put money back in families’ pockets—demonstrated the real potential for organizing to secure policy change that improves people’s lives.

This is completely contradicted by the report’s own findings. Under the Biden administration, the share of wealth controlled by the financial oligarchy surged at a level only eclipsed by the Trump administration. The combined wealth of the 10 richest individuals in America doubled, from $976 billion in January 2021 to $1,991 billion in January 2025. During this time, labor’s share of national income plunged to an all-time low.

Under Biden, the food insecurity rate for American children increased from 13 percent to 19 percent. By the last year of his administration, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development asserted in its annual report, “The number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2024 was the highest ever recorded.”

In other words, the Biden administration was a disaster for the working class and a bonanza for the financial oligarchy.

The preface to the report is written by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who declares that “an economy that works great for those at the very top and leaves everyone else hanging on by their fingernails … happened through deliberate policy choices.”

Yet she does not explain how a vast share of the increase in social inequality documented in the Oxfam report took place under an administration she endorsed and whose policies she repeatedly, and without exception, defended.

Left unsaid in the main text of the Oxfam report is one word: capitalism. Its essential framework is to argue that the growth of social inequality is merely a policy choice, and that another choice could just as easily be adopted within the present social framework.

In reality, however, the persistent growth of social inequality, under Democrats and Republicans alike, is a fundamental feature of the capitalist system. As Karl Marx explained 150 years ago, “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is … at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.”

The Trump administration represents, in its highest and most grotesque manifestation, an extension of the essential characteristics of the capitalist system described by Karl Marx over 150 years ago. It is a government of, by and for the capitalist oligarchy, governing directly on behalf of the billionaires and their corporations.

This is the class content of the destruction of democratic rights. Trump’s escalating conspiracy for dictatorship flows from the needs of a ruling class that can maintain its wealth and power only through violence, repression and the destruction of democratic rights. The complicity and cowardice of the Democratic Party is explained by the fact that it represents another faction of the same capitalist oligarchy.

But the social mood in the United States is changing. Last month, the Trump administration’s attack on democratic rights and austerity policies led to protests by millions of people in the “No Kings” demonstrations, which were among the largest in American history. A recent Axios poll found that 67 percent of young people in the US now view the term “socialism” positively or neutrally, compared to just 40 percent for “capitalism.”

There is mounting opposition among broad sections of the population, including workers and young people, to social inequality and the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy.

Samia Hassan, the Butcher of Tanzania, sworn in as president amid escalating repression

Kipchumba Ochieng

Behind the walls of a heavily guarded military compound in Dodoma, President Samia Suluhu Hassan took the oath of president following a fraudulent election, organised by the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) regime to continue its sixty-four years in power.

Monday’s ceremony, held under tight military control, unfolded in an atmosphere of fear. In Dar es Salaam, petrol stations and grocery shops were shut and the streets almost empty, while in Dodoma, most residents stayed indoors. Schools and colleges across the country closed, public transport was suspended, and even church services were cancelled. The event was broadcast live by the state-run Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation, the only media outlet allowed to cover it. The public was excluded, and internet and social media access were cut nationwide.

President of Tanzania Samia Suluhu Hassan [Photo by Scottish Government / CC BY 2.0]

The extraordinary security measures were an attempt to project an image of stability by a deeply isolated ruling class clinging to power through police-state violence. The state was reeling from four days of unprecedented nationwide protests that had developed into a mass popular uprising. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers, youth, and the unemployed defied curfews, army patrols, and live ammunition to reject the stolen election.

Sixteen “opposition candidates” attended the ceremony, another demonstration that they were never more than a fig leaf of opposition cultivated by CCM to legitimise a fraudulent process that supposedly produced a 98 percent vote for Hassan.

Absent was the main opposition party, the pro-business CHADEMA led by Tundu Lissu, who remains imprisoned on fabricated treason charges.

Only four African leaders attended the ceremony: Daniel Chapo of Mozambique, Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, Évariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi, and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia, each presiding over brutal dictatorships. Like Hassan, Chapo’s FRELIMO government, in power for fifty years, rigged the 2024 elections and crushed mass protests, killing over 400 people and arresting more than 7,000.

The inauguration took place with the streets of major cities still stained with blood. As internet services gradually return following a six-day shutdown, reports are surfacing of mass killings. CHADEMA estimates that more than 1,000 people have been killed. Diplomatic sources told the BBC of at least 500 deaths. Charles Kitima, secretary general of the Tanzania Episcopal Conference which has long backed the regime, acknowledged that “hundreds” had died, citing reports from communities across the country.

On Tuesday, CHADEMA spokesperson Brenda Rupia said that the security forces “are holding dead bodies” and that the remains of victims were being secretly dumped to hide the scale of the killings.

Horrific accounts continue to emerge despite regime threats against anyone sharing images or videos on social media deemed to “cause panic,” warnings that doing so could amount to treason, a charge carrying the death penalty.

In Dar es Salaam’s Temeke district, a resident told Human Rights Watch that her neighbour, who had not taken part in the protests, was shot and killed outside his home by a man in civilian clothes. Another resident, speaking anonymously to Reuters for fear of reprisal, said a family member was shot dead outside a hospital after being mistaken for a protester.

A football agency, Viral Scout Management, confirmed that seven of their players between 15 and 22 had been killed, including Rajabu Rajab (17), Anthony Rico (18), Abdulqareem Ali (16), Peter Eliya (19), Mshani Musa (17), Omar Musa (15), and John Hosea (22), in Mbeya, Dar es Salaam and Mwanza.

A Kenyan teacher, John Okoth Ogutu, who had been living and working in Tanzania for eight years, was shot and killed in Ubungo on October 29.

Hassan has sought to blame the uprising on “foreign agents”. Speaking during her coronation, she claimed that “some of those arrested for causing disturbances came from outside the country” and vowed that security forces would “restore peace.”

These claims are entirely unfounded. They target Kenyans and other East Africans in a bid to whip up xenophobia and distract from the fact that the protests were led by Tanzanians themselves, driven by massive poverty, inequality and state violence. Kenyan media has reported that Tanzanian security forces are now explicitly targeting Kenyans. The Standard observed:

“Severe measures will be taken,” the police statement warned […]. For hundreds of Kenyans and East Africans living and working in Tanzania, the message was unmistakable that they were the target. The directive was followed within hours by increased police presence on highways and at all major border posts. Monday evening, security forces mounted additional roadblocks and intensified surveillance at crossings including Namanga, Holili and Lungalunga–Hororo, effectively sealing off escape routes for those trying to flee.

Hassan’s accusations mirror the propaganda deployed by Kenyan President William Ruto during last year’s mass demonstrations. As millions of youth and workers took to the streets against International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictated austerity, tax hikes, and police killings, Ruto claimed the protests were orchestrated by the Ford Foundation. “We ask the Ford Foundation to explain to Kenyans its role in the recent protests. We will call out all those who are bent on rolling back hard won democracy,” Ruto declared as he gunned down protestors. The claim was absurd and no evidence has ever been produced to support it.

Despite the attempt to whip up anti-Kenyan sentiment, Hassan is not in conflict with Ruto. She is working alongside him. Across East Africa, the regimes of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are coordinating repression and sharing security operations against opponents.

In Uganda, two Kenyan human rights activists, Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, were abducted while attending Bobi Wine’s campaign event. Their whereabouts remain unknown, and the Ruto government has maintained a deliberate silence. Last year, Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye was kidnapped in Nairobi with Kenyan involvement and later appeared before a Ugandan military tribunal accused of treason. Exiled Tanzanian activist Maria Sarungi Tsehai was seized in Nairobi, choked and interrogated by armed men demanding access to her phone. Kenyan activists who travelled to Tanzania in solidarity with CHADEMA’s leader Tundu Lissu were detained, subjected to sexual abuse and deported.

This developing security alliance recalls Operation Condor in Latin America in the 1970s, when US-backed dictatorships coordinated to suppress, kidnap and eliminate opponents across borders. Confronted with rising unemployment, a burgeoning urban youth population and IMF imposed austerity that has made life intolerable for millions, the fear of the stooges of imperialism is not of “foreign interference” but of workers starting to see that their struggle transcend colonial borders.

Washington, London, Brussels and Ottawa issued carefully worded statements of “concern” over the killings and the six-day internet blackout. Their real priority is to safeguard profits, trade corridors and resource concessions.

Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port is a strategic hub for the export of minerals, agricultural goods, oil and gas, and serves as a transit artery for Zambia, the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi and Uganda. Roughly 70 percent of the port’s transit cargo is destined for neighboring countries, amounting to nearly a quarter of total throughput. Shell, Equinor and ExxonMobil are also vying for control of offshore gas and LNG export infrastructure central to Western energy interests, their war against Russia in Ukraine and preparations for war against China.

An aerial view of Dar es Salaam Port [Photo by Prof. Chen Hualin / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Carney’s 2025 “Canada Strong” federal budget: Austerity to fund rearmament, war and corporate profits

Pierre Lajeunesse

The 2025 federal budget that Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne delivered to parliament Tuesday marks a decisive lurch right by Prime Minister Mark Carney, his Liberal government and the Canadian ruling class as a whole.

Promoted under the nationalist slogan of “Canada Strong,” the budget is being cast as a demonstration of the government’s readiness to take “tough decisions” in the name of defending the nation. In reality, it lays out a program of rearmament and corporate enrichment to be paid for through the slashing of public sector jobs, the evisceration of public services, and other sweeping attacks on working people.

Introducing the budget, Champagne reiterated Carney’s repeated pledge that “Canada’s new government will spend less so that we can invest more.” The meaning of this formulation is unmistakable. The Liberals aim to spend less on healthcare, housing, education, public services and social supports—so they can funnel tens of billions more into weapons procurement, corporate tax incentives, resource extraction infrastructure projects, and the expansion of Canada’s military-industrial complex.

Carney and Champagne present this as a response to a rapidly changing and more threatening global environment. A key line in the budget document reprises Carney’s repeated warnings that the US-led world order has collapsed. Canada, it declared, must “redefine its international, commercial, and security relationships,” adding, “This is not a transition. It is a rupture—a generational shift taking place over a short period of time. This new reality is reshaping Canada’s economic foundations.”

While the trade war launched by President Donald Trump and the Liberal government’s retaliatory tariffs hammer workers in key sectors on both sides of the border, including steel, aluminum, lumber and auto production, the focus of the Canadian bourgeoisie is how they can use Trump’s actions and annexation threats as political cover to carry out a radical restructuring of class relations in the interests of Canadian capital and at the expense of the working class. The 2025 budget is a blueprint for girding Canadian imperialism for trade war and global war. Increased worker-exploitation to enhance corporate “competitiveness” and the diversion of social resources to fund the biggest military build-up in more than seven decades are at its heart.

Already, in the run-up to the tabling of the government’s “transformational budget,” the Liberals ordered Canada Post to implement a “restructuring” plan that will result in the elimination of all daily and home mail delivery and the elimination of tens of thousands full-time jobs. This, they have boasted, is proof of their readiness to make “tough choices” to realize “fiscal sustainability.”

By goring postal workers, long one of the most militant sections of the working class, and effectively blowing up the post office as a public service, Carney has signaled that all public services are on the chopping block. Backed by the financial oligarchy, the government intends to impose similar attacks across the board, slashing public services and the rights and jobs of the workers who administer them, to pay for militarism, war and enriching the capitalist elite.

Preparing Canada for world war

Military spending and the buildup of Canada’s war-making capacity are the central priorities of the budget, with the government detailing plans to increase military spending by $84 billion over the next five years.

In June, Carney announced an immediate 17 percent increase in military spending to ensure Canada met NATO’s 2 percent of GDP military spending target in the current 2025-26 fiscal year. Now the government is positioning the country to reach NATO’s new spending target of 5 percent of GDP, which will require raising the defence budget more than threefold from what it was last year, to $150 billion per annum by 2035.

To meet these targets will require not just massive increases in defence spending to be paid for by the working class in the form of reduced public services and social supports and higher taxes. They will require the militarization of the Canadian economy. Indeed, at a post-budget press conference, Champagne declared, “Every company in the country should basically have a defence strategy.”

As an initial step in the government’s Defence Industrial Strategy, Ottawa will invest $6.6 billion over five years in boosting arms manufacturers’ access to capital, military related research and innovation, bolstering supply chains and augmenting supplies of critical minerals.

The budget explicitly recommits Canada to a lead role in the US-NATO-instigated war against Russia. It declares, “As the world grows more volatile and dangerous, now more than ever, Canada must be ready and able to defend our territory, our people, and our values to secure our sovereignty and to protect and uphold our commitments to our allies. This includes helping to counter Russian aggression and to uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity to ensure security across the Euro-Atlantic region.” 

To this end, Ottawa is allocating an additional $2.7 billion over three years to fund Operation Reassurance, the Canadian Armed Forces’ largest overseas deployment, supporting NATO’s forward military presence on Russia’s borders through its battlegroup in Latvia. In parallel, the government is launching a new $1 billion Arctic Infrastructure Fund to build airports, deep-water ports and all-season road networks across the North—dual-use projects designed to facilitate civilian logistics and military force projection toward the Arctic frontier, where resource extraction and strategic conflict with Russia and other global powers are intensifying.

But even these massive increases represent only a down payment. The government is already laying the groundwork for the next stage: a new fleet of submarines, expanded Arctic military bases, long-range strike capabilities and dramatically increased integration with US defence structures, including Trump’s $175 billion “Golden Dome” missile project directed at Russia and China. 

The budget allocates billions to expand weapons production, munitions manufacturing, drone warfare systems, naval shipbuilding, cyberwarfare capabilities and space-based surveillance.

Sweeping cuts to the public sector and social services to pay for war

At the same time, to pay for this massive rearmament the government has initiated a sweeping program of cuts and restructuring across the public sector.  

The most immediate and devastating measure is the planned elimination of 40,000 federal public service jobs by 2028. The government plans to use attrition and buyouts, but has already signaled that it will invoke the public sector “workforce adjustment” clause to impose layoffs where voluntary measures fall short.

The consequences will be far-reaching: reduced access to income support programs, longer processing times for immigration and citizenship applications, deteriorating workplace safety enforcement, weakened environmental monitoring and the erosion of federal capacity in health, science, transportation and infrastructure. The goal is not to improve efficiency, but to shrink public services so that resources can be diverted to the military and corporate sector.

The main other cuts and structural shifts announced in Tuesday’s budget include:

• Real-term cuts to provincial transfers for healthcare, education and social services, which will fall behind inflation and population growth.

• Sharp reductions to operational budgets at key departments, including Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship; Employment and Social Development; Environment and Climate Change; Transport; and Fisheries and Oceans.

• Reduced support for public and affordable housing, replaced with public-private partnership financing structures designed to guarantee developer and investor profit.

• Corporate tax incentives and accelerated capital write-offs, marketed as “productivity investment,” which further reduce already historically low corporate taxation levels.

• Redirection of public research funding toward defence-related innovation, “dual-use” technology development and supply chains for munitions and advanced weapons manufacturing.

In his budget speech, Champagne boasted that Canada is “one of the best places to invest in the world,” pointing to the budget’s reduction of the marginal effective tax rate to 13.2 percent. This is the lowest in the G7, even lower than the United States after Trump’s reactionary One Big Beautiful Bill extended his 2017 tax cuts.

Embracing the type of immigrant-bashing associated with the fascist US President Donald Trump and far-right Tory leader Pierre Poilievre, the Liberals included in their budget a series of vicious attacks on immigrants. Under the targets announced in the budget, temporary-resident admissions, including temporary foreign workers and international students, will be almost halved from 2024.

Asylum-seekers and refugees, that is the most vulnerable sections of the population, will henceforth face copays for medicines, vision-care and other health services. This goes hand in hand with the Liberals’ deepening of their collaboration with Trump, through the strengthening of the Canada Border Services Agency and further restrictions on who can apply for refugee status contained in Bill C-12.

The government is pairing austerity with nationalist propaganda aimed at rallying public support around patriotic sacrifice. The working class is being told that hardship is necessary to defend the nation’s future. This rhetoric is not new. It is the language used by every imperialist ruling elite as they prepare for shooting wars to defend their economic interests.

Big business and unions see 2025 budget as a first step

Sections of the business press acknowledge the rightward shift being spearheaded by the Liberals under the former central banker Carney but are already demanding even more.

The Globe and Mail editorial board criticized the budget for “prevarication and sleight of hand,” noting that the government’s capital investment program is “a mere pittance” compared to what would be required to fundamentally reorient the economy. Their frustration is revealing: they want deeper cuts and faster military expansion.

Theo Argitis of the Business Council of Canada summarized the critique from Bay Street and the corporate boardrooms: “This isn’t a generational budget. It moves in the right direction on some fronts, but the government was not as ambitious as it could have been. If you’re looking to transform the economy, this budget will not do it.”

In Parliament, Conservative leader Poilievre denounced the budget for creating “the most costly and largest budget deficit in history outside of COVID,” pointing to the projected budget deficit of $78 billion. Poilievre’s comments made clear that the faction of the ruling class he speaks for is demanding even more rapid and brutal cuts to social spending.

Meanwhile, the trade union bureaucracy is already moving to enforce working class compliance with the budget. The Canadian Labour Congress issued a statement calling on the big business parties in Parliament to come together to “strengthen this budget” by taking stronger action to protect jobs and public services. This is a signal of their intent: the unions and their allies in the New Democratic Party (NDP) will facilitate passage of the budget while posing as critics.

At the unions’ behest, the NDP has propped up minority Liberal governments under Trudeau and now Carney as they have shifted ever further right. This has included: enforcing a murderous profits-before-lives policy at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic; massively increasing military spending; waging war in all but name on Russia; backing Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinians; and unilaterally arrogating the power to illegalize strikes of railway, port, Air Canada and Canada Post workers.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, the Liberals needed at least three opposition votes—or abstentions—to secure a majority. In the hours following the budget, Conservative Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor to join the Liberals, reducing the threshold to just two votes. With the other opposition parties all indicating their intention to vote against the budget, the NDP’s votes (or abstentions) are likely to prove decisive in ensuring the budget’s passage.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which bargains on behalf of over 165,000 federal workers, reserved itself to expressing “deep concern” over the plan to slash tens of thousands of jobs. PSAC committed only to “protect public services and the people who provide them by enforcing the provisions of our collective agreements and the rights enshrined in labour law,” meaning they will work to keep workers subordinated to the pro-employer collective bargaining system and prostrate before “legal” attacks on their jobs. 

The union apparatus will attempt to suppress opposition as layoffs begin and living conditions deteriorate. The bureaucracy’s response to the Liberals’ declaration of war makes clear that their role is not to defend workers, but to police them on behalf of the state and corporations.

Global capitalist crisis and working class opposition

Carney’s budget must be understood within the context of global capitalist breakdown and imperialist war preparations. Across North America and Europe, ruling classes are dismantling what remains of social welfare structures in order to funnel public resources into military buildup. The movement toward authoritarian rule—enhanced police powers, the outlawing of strikes, ever-wider restrictions on the right to protest, intensified border controls—is part of the same process.

The working class faces the same enemy and the same struggle in every country.

The way forward cannot be found through the NDP, the union bureaucracy, or appeals to the Liberal Party’s “better nature.” None of these forces oppose the militarist and austerity agenda, they are pushing it forward.