A meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Picture: WEF on Flickr) `
The global elite returned to the Swiss town of Davos this week as the Oxfam charity revealed that the rich are getting richer.
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) comes amid climate disaster, war in the Middle East and Ukraine and Donald Trump’s inauguration.
But the delegates won’t address any of these crises of the system. It’s a forum for the politicians and billionaires to make deals that keep the profit system running.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is at Davos trying to convince the rich that Britain is a good place to invest because the Labour government is a friend to big business. And in exchange for investment, she promises to roll back regulations and push through privatisation to keep bosses happy.
As part of the programme to boost economic growth, Reeves is expected to announce that she will support airport expansion. This would include a third runway at London Heathrow. Environmental campaigners have said that such a plan “would have had dire implications for present and future generations”.
Davos is crawling with unelected figures. Baroness Gustafsson is a businesswoman and former boss of the Darktrace cyber security firm. She was appointed to the House of Lords in October so she could be investment minister in the Labour government.
Varun Chandra was appointed as special adviser on business and investment to prime minister Keir Starmer. He was an investment banker and the former partner of Hakluyt. It’s a secretive consultancy that charges businesses and sovereign wealth funds to gather intelligence on government and corporate issues.
Hakluyt was founded by former MI6 spooks and is known for employing retired spies.
Despite their party losing the last election, Tories such as George Osborne and Theresa May will still be seeking to win friends and influence people at Davos.
Former chancellor Osborne is now a partner of Robey Warshaw, a “boutique” investment bank based in Mayfair in central London.
This British delegation will join bankers from firms including JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
As the WEF started, Oxfam reported that “inequality is out of control”. Although the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, the wealth of the billionaires rose three times faster in 2024 than it did in 2023.
Over 200 people became billionaires last year. If trends continue, we can expect to see the world’s first trillionaires in the next 10 years.
And it’s not because these people are more talented and hard working than the rest of us. Oxfam reported that 60 percent of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, cronyism and monopolies.
The charity pointed out that colonialism has left a huge gap in wealth between the richest countries in the Global North and the Global South.
Oxfam said, “Tens of millions of people across the world have suffered because of the ideas of racism and white supremacy”. These ideas “gave justification and moral license to unprecedented and systematic levels of brutality, exploitation, and, at times, extermination”. This brutal legacy still leads to global inequality today.
As delegates arrived in their private jets, they might have seen the words, “Tax the super rich,” projected onto a mountainside. Campaign group Fight Inequality Alliance projected the words alongside the faces of Trump, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
The 1 percent are amassing huge fortunes while billions live in poverty. And to raise the alarm about the influence they have on politics.
Davos shows up the lie that there isn’t any more to pay for public services or working class living standards. There’s plenty of money, but it’s in the wrong hands. And Davos shows how unelected elites organise to protect their wealth and influence politics.
The Unite the union members have won commitments to protect drivers from the perils of heatwaves
Stop Heathrow's third runway
Unite union rep speaks on deal
