Have billionaires accumulated their wealth illegitimately?
Nov 7th 2019BILLIONAIRES HAVE never exactly been popular with the radical left. But with a member of the nine-zero club sitting in the White House, and a decade of slow growth in living standards, some Democrats have taken to attacking billionaires to draw attention to their argument for root-and-branch economic reform. “Billionaires should not exist,” says Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate. Plutocrat-bashing has become part of the debate in Britain, too, where an election will be held on December 12th. At the Labour Party’s campaign opener Jeremy Corbyn, its far-left leader, attacked the Duke of Westminster, one of Britain’s wealthiest landowners, and Rupert Murdoch, a media mogul.Socialists argue that anyone who has become fantastically rich has profited from a rigged system. “Every billionaire is a policy failure,” goes the memorable phrase. To assess this claim The Economist has drawn on data from Forbes, a business magazine, on billionaires in the rich world, updating an index of crony capitalism that we first put together in 2014 (see chart).Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address