In the middle of all the chaos in the world, Forbes magazine did not forget to celebrate its ritual of publishing its 40th annual World’s Billionaires List on 10 March 2026. The list not only reveals the continuing billionaire boom in the numbers and the growing concentration of power and wealth, but also highlights the rise of glob al inequality. Fortunes and fault lines move together in a world of plenty and pleasure controlled by so few, while the vast majority of people struggle to fulfil their basic needs for a dignified living.
According to the Forbes list, there are 3,428 billionaires in the world, and their combined net wealth has increased from $1 trillion in 2000 to $20.1 tril lion in 2026. In the last year alone, billionaires’ wealth increased by $4 trillion. In 2026, 400 billionaires were added to the list—the highest since the publication of the list began in 1987. This means the world has produced more than one billionaire per day over the past year, while millions of people lost their jobs. In this year’s list, there are 20 billionaires with 12-figure fortunes as members of the $100 Billion Club, collectively owning $3.8 trillion, while 700 million people struggle to survive on $2.15 per day.
These billionaires are not merely the products of their own talent, hard work, creative abilities or family lines, just as the 700 million people living in poverty do not suffer because of a lack of hard work, skills, or talent. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the suffering of marginalised masses are products of the marketisation of politics in which people’s labour generates profits for billionaires. States and governments create policies that facilitate the concentration of wealth by perpetuating conditions of poverty and inequality under the exploitative working conditions of capitalism, which defines and dominates the political economy of capitalist development across much of the world. Corporate-driven states and governments are responsible for producing these billionaires, who in turn control the state directly and indirectly—through funding, promoting propaganda for electoral manipulation, owning media, consultancies, public relations and advertising industries and influencing policymaking to serve their interests at the expense of the people.
Geographically speaking, out of a total of 3,428 billion aires, more than half (1,757) are from the United States (989), China (539), and India (229). American billionaires own the lion’s share of global billionaire wealth—$8.4 tril lion out of the total combined billionaire wealth of $20.1 trillion. These three countries face enormous challenges of rising wealth inequality amid a continuing billionaire boom, which creates very different life experiences based on ownership, access to power, and the everyday struggle to survive the pressures of marginalisation. The ten richest Indian billionaires alone own more than $1 trillion, while India’s GDP today is around $4.51 trillion. This not only reveals the scale of wealth ownership and inequality, but also reflects the nature of the state and government in India, which appears to stand with the billionaire class while leaving the working masses to face a deepening cost-of-living crisis.
The profit-making market machine is never dull for these individual billionaires, as the state and government stand firmly behind them. Meanwhile, working people make all the money: they produce all the goods and provide all the services, harvest all the food, and construct all the schools, colleges, universities, roads and communication networks, houses, and hospitals. Yet they themselves often suffer from hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, and ill health. These conditions are not accidental; they are the outcome of the design of the capitalist system. In this process, billionaires have effectively transformed democracy into a form of billionaire oligarchy and society into an orderly marketplace of commodities, where profit over people has become the rule rather than merely an outcome.
The Forbes list not only reveals the scale of wealth concentration as a form of economic injustice rooted in different regimes of capitalist exploitation, but also points to the political structures that facilitate such an economic system—one that benefits 3,428 billionaires who are not blessed by gods or goddesses, but by the policies of states and governments across the world. In a world of 8.3 billion people, only a tiny fraction—the 3,428 billionaires—live lives of extraordinary privilege, while the vast majority struggle to manage and survive in 2026.
This billionaires’ club represents a class network of collaboration and cooperation without territorial boundaries, fuelling the forward march of right-wing reactionary forces and their war-mongering imperialist agendas. As cheerleaders of capitalism, they preside over a system that ruins the lives and livelihoods of people in order to amass wealth, undermines citizenship rights, and erodes economic justice—thereby breeding inequality and exploitation, the very lifeblood of capitalism. Therefore, the struggle against the capitalist system remains central to ensuring a more equitable distribution of wealth and to building an egalitarian society grounded in fairness and justice in all its forms.
The writer teaches at the London Metropolitan University.
