There is one political problem from which all others follow. It is the major cause of Donald Trump, of Nigel Farage, of the shocking weakness of their opponents, of the polarisation tearing societies apart, of the devastation of the living world. It is simply stated: the extreme wealth of a small number of people.
It can also be quantified. The World Inequality Report (WIR) 2026 shows that about 56,000 people – 0.001% of the global population – corral three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. They afflict almost every country. In the UK, for example, 50 families hold more wealth than 50% of the population combined.
You can watch their fortunes grow. In 2024, Oxfam’s figures show, the wealth of the world’s 2,769 billionaires grew by $2tn, or $2,000bn. The total global spending on international aid last year was projected to be, at most, $186bn, less than a tenth of the increment in their wealth. Governments tell us they “can’t afford” more. In the UK, billionaires, on average, have become more than 1,000% richer since 1990. Most of their wealth derives from property, inheritance and finance. They have become so rich, in other words, at our expense.
The issue affects every aspect of policy. Trump is not seizing Venezuela’s oil wealth for the sake of the US poor. He couldn’t give a damn about them, as his “big, beautiful bill” – robbing the poor to give to the rich – revealed. He covets Greenland on behalf of the same elite interests, of which he is the avatar.
When the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, helped destroy the lives of the world’s poorest by tearing down USAID, he did so on behalf of his class. The same goes for Trump’s assaults on democracy, and his war on the living world. It is the ultra-rich who benefit most from destruction, in making money and in spending it. The WIR shows that the richest 1% of the world’s population account for 41% of greenhouse gas emissions arising from private capital ownership: almost twice that of the bottom 90%. And through their consumption, another study shows, the 1% produce as many greenhouse gases as the poorest two-thirds.
Inequality damages every aspect of our lives. Decades of research by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson shows that higher inequality, regardless of absolute levels of wealth, is associated with higher crime, worse public health, higher addiction, lower educational attainment, worse status anxiety (leading to higher consumption of positional goods), worse pollution and destruction, and a host of other ills.
Extreme inequality creates an “Epstein class” of global predators, exploiting the rest financially – and in other ways. It creates an ethos that no longer recognises our common humanity, that sees other people, as Musk puts it, as “non-player characters”, and believes that, “the fundamental weakness of western civilisation is empathy”.
This is the metric by which you can tell who in politics are your allies and who are your enemies: whether they support or oppose the extreme concentration of wealth. In fact, the matter should be definitional. Those who support it (let’s call them Group 1) are the right. Those who oppose it (Group 2) are the left.
As soon as you understand politics in this light, you notice something extraordinary. Almost the entire population is in Group 2. Polling across 36 nations by the Pew Research Center found that 84% see economic equality as a big problem, and 86% see the political influence of the rich as a major cause of it. In 33 of these nations, a majority believe their country’s economic system needs either “major changes” or “complete reform”. In the UK, a YouGov poll revealed, 75% support a wealth tax on fortunes above £10m, while only 13% oppose it. But – and here’s the astonishing thing – almost the entire political class is in Group 1. You can search the manifestos of major parties that once belonged to the left, and find no call to make billionaires history.
Quite the opposite in fact. Even when politicians are forced to respond to calls for a wealth tax, they dismiss it, as UK ministers have done, with two excuses. The first is that it won’t raise much revenue. Maybe, maybe not: there’s a wide range of evidence on this matter. But revenue-raising is the least of its benefits. Far more important are two other issues. One is fairness. As the WIR reports, “Effective income tax rates climb steadily for most of the population but fall sharply for billionaires and centi-millionaires.” This undermines trust in the tax system and politics in general. The other is reducing the power of the ultra-rich over our lives. To restore democracy and create a fairer, safer, greener world, we must bring the ultra-rich to heel, cutting their fortunes until they can no longer bludgeon us.
The second excuse is that the uber-rich will flee the country. There are three possible responses to this claim. The first is that there’s no evidence to support it. The second is, if true, good riddance: they do us more harm than good. The third is to say: then the obvious solution is a global tax-avoidance measure. So guess what? While 125 nations supported this approach, Keir Starmer’s government was one of nine that opposed it. Our government doesn’t tax the ultra-rich enough not because it can’t, but because it doesn’t want to.
It’s not just politicians. Almost all the media belongs to Group 1. As the wealth and power of the proprietor class becomes ever greater and harder to justify, the views expressed in their outlets become ever crazier. Immigrants, asylum seekers, Muslims, women, transgender people, disabled people, students, protesters: anyone and everyone must be blamed for our dysfunctions, except those causing them. Ever more extreme “culture wars” (a euphemism for divide-and-rule) must be waged.
It’s also why imaginary threats (Venezuela, “cultural Marxists”, “domestic terrorists”) must constantly be drummed up. You cannot have both a free market in media ownership and a free market in information and ideas. The oligarchs who dominate the sector stifle inconvenient thoughts and promote the policies that protect their fortunes.
No one would claim that taking on extreme wealth is easy. But the battle begins with political parties spelling out this aim, clearly and unequivocally. Either they represent the great majority, or they represent the tiny minority: they cannot do both. So where, we might ask, are our representatives?
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
