It's a billionaire's world

George Monbiot writes: 

The World Inequality Report...2026 shows that about 56,000 people – 0.001% of the global population – corral three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. ... 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. George Monbiot, Money talks, 23 January 2026

There is, possibly, a case to be made for huge disparities in wealth in a world without poverty, where the wealth is channeled into the relief of poverty, and where the wealth is accumulated through ways that benefit society or, at least, are not destructive of society. In such a world, philosophical discussions about desirable wealth distributions would be interesting and likely to be inconclusive, with good arguments to be made on all sides. But we don't live in such a world. There is poverty (7.5% of the world's population is estimated to be living in 'extreme poverty') and other afflictions that could be alleviated with a more equal distribution of wealth. There is some philanthropy, but:

Forbes once again investigated the lifetime philanthropic giving of every member of The Forbes 400. In total, these billionaires—worth at least $3.8 billion each—have donated an aggregate $319 billion to charitable causes over their lifetimes. [H]owever, America’s richest people are still not all that generous, relatively speaking. Their collective charitable giving equals just 4.6% of their total wealth—and that’s down from 5% last year. Three-quarters of them have given less than 5% of their fortunes away, including 40% who have donated less than 1% of their riches. America’s richest billionaires keep getting richer. They’re not donating much more, Ella Malmgren, 'Forbes', 9 September 2025

What about the sources of great wealth? Inheritance is one; in many countries, it's relatively easy to minimise with legal strategies like trusts, gifts, and charitable donations to minimize inheritance taxes. Rising property prices also have much to do with rising inequality, widening the gap between those who inherit wealth and those who, in many countries, can never own their own homes, however hard they work. As well, it's relatively easy for large corporations to influence the policy environment to discriminate against small businesses and undermine competition; another source of wealth accumulation at the expense of wider society.

All this is not necessarily objectionable. I just think it unlikely that it soaring wealth inequality - its randomness, and its co-existence with rising inequality and extreme poverty - reflects society's wishes. My guess is that it conflicts with them. It's come about because we don't choose policy outcomes: even in democratic countries we choose politicians, political parties and base our choices on ideology, looks or reported and often distorted media images. Any correlation between what sort of society people actually want, and the society that arises, is almost accidental. Politicians and the elites can get away with this, because they can talk vaguely about economic growth, as if achieving that will mean that poor people will inevitably benefit. It mostly did in the past, but doesn't today:

Despite experiencing economic growth post-2020, a third of 160 countries analysed witnessed a surge in extreme poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most adversely affected region, with an average of 130,000 individuals per country moving into extreme poverty per percentage point of GDP growth each year. Growth without gains, UNDP, 16 October 2023

The implicit target of most governments is growth in GDP or GDP per capita. As we are not used to thinking in terms of coherent, explicit and verifiable policy goals, GDP has become a de facto target, though its weaknesses as an indicator of well-being are widely known. 

My suggestion, then, is that we start thinking about the sort of society we want. We could, for instance, explicitly target poverty, and reward people for achieving it. Social Policy Bonds would channel the market's incentives and efficiencies into doing just that: on a global scale, a mix of governments, supra-national bodies, philanthropists and ordinary people could all contribute to a fund that would redeem Human Development Bonds. At a national level, we could target unemployment, health, literacy and other indicators of poverty that either are themselves, or are inextricably linked to, poverty and deprivation. The very obvious benefit of applying the Social Policy Bond concept in this way is that we'd be increasing social well-being as efficiently as possible: the market for the bonds would see to that. There are other, less obvious benefits: transparency and stability of policy goals, as well as buy-in. But, even more relevant for this discussion is that a bond regime would channel wealth and wealth creation into projects that benefit the whole of society. People could still become rich - or even richer, but under a bond regime the would do so by diverting their expertise and capital into projects that benefit everybody. A further consequence of this is that other activities: those of zero or negative social benefit, could be more heavily taxed. There's much more about Social Policy Bonds and their benefits in the papers and books linked to on SocialGoals.com. All my work on the bonds can be downloaded for no charge.