At the beginning of each year, the world’s corporate and political elite gather
+
to gather:
reunirse
in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to pat each other on the back
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to pat each other on the back:
darse mutuamente palmaditas en la espalda
, attend seminars on “the Fourth Industrial Revolution
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the Fourth Industrial Revolution
A grandes rasgos, si la primera Revolución industrial (siglo XVIII) introdujo la mecanización en las fábrixas gracias a la máquina de vapor, la segunda (siglos XIX-XX) impulsó la producción en masa con las líneas de montaje gracias a la electrificación y la tercera (mediados del siglo XX), conocida como Revolución digital, impulsó la automatización y la informática, actualmente estaríamos viviendo la cuarta revolución industrial, caracterizada por los algoritmos, el Big Data y la inteligencia artificial.
” — whatever that might be — and generally mull over
+
mull over:
sopesar, reflexionar
the state of the world. Rarely is so much wealth to be found in so few conference rooms
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conference rooms:
salas de reuniones
. And each year, Oxfam, the global development charity, takes the opportunity to run the numbers
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to run the numbers:
hacer números
on the state of global inequality. Oxfam’s findings are often eye-catching
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eye-catching:
llamativo
, but this year especially so.
The wealth of the five richest people in the world, they found, has more than doubled, from $405bn
+
bn:
miles de millones (abr. billions)
in 2020 to $869bn in late 2023. That’s an increase of about fourteen million dollars an hour, which is not bad going by anyone’s reckoning
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reckoning:
estimación
. Perhaps more strikingly, Oxfam calculates that on current trends the world is due to welcome its first trillionaire
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the world is due to welcome its first trillionaire
"El mundo está a punto de dar la bienvenida a su primer billonario". Aunque resulta habitual leer y escuchar la palabra ‘billonarios’ en español para referirse a potentados como Elon Musk o Jeff Bezos, lo cierto es que son solo (!) ‘milmillonarios’. El billion del inglés se corresponde con los ‘mil millones’ del español. En el momento de escribir estás líneas, Musk tiene un patrimonio de $434,9 billions; esto es, ‘434.900 millones de dólares’. Para llegar a ser trillionaire en inglés, deberá alcanzar una unidad de millones seguida de nueve ceros (1.000.000.000) , lo que le convertiría en el primer ‘billonario’ en español. El ‘trillón’ en español y quintillion en inglés es una unidad seguida de dieciocho ceros: 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.
within a decade. Elon Musk, the richest person at the time of writing, is worth about a fifth of that, at $210bn.
It may of course take longer than Oxfam predicts, but the global trends are reasonably clear. Go back a decade or so, and the world’s then richest man, Carlos Slim — a Mexican telecoms magnate — was worth
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to be worth:
tener un pratrimonio de
about $70bn, or one-third of Musk’s current estimated value. It does seem likely that, without a radical change, we’ll have our first trillionaire by the 2040s.
Even in macroeconomics, where huge numbers are commonplace
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commonplace:
común
, a trillion dollars is a big deal. For context, the entire annual economic output
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output:
producción
of the United Kingdom comes in at about $2.9tn
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tn:
billones (abr. trillions)
. To grasp
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to grasp:
comprender, asimilar
how unprecedented it will be, it’s helpful to think historically. The oil magnate John D. Rockefeller was announced by newspapers as the world’s first billionaire back in 1916. US GDP was around $50bn then, so Rockefeller was worth about 2 per cent of national income
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income:
renta
. Now it’s closer to $27tn and expected to grow to $40tn by the mid-2030s, so a contemporary trillionaire would be worth between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent of the output of the world’s richest country — a larger chunk
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chunk:
trozo
than the wealthiest person in modern economic history.
Indeed, there have never been as many super-rich people as there are today — with numbers rocketing
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to rocket:
dispararse
since the financial crisis of 2008. Back then, there were one thousand billionaires — now there are more than two thousand. One conspicuous indicator of this can be seen each summer in the marinas
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marinas:
puerto deportivos
of well-to-do
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well-to-do:
de lujo
resorts. At the turn of the millennium
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At the turn of the millennium:
a principios del siglo XXI
there were fewer than two thousand superyachts, compared with more than five thousand today, with about 150 new launches each year.
Does any of this matter? Aren’t billionaires, even the odd
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odd:
esporádico
trillionaire, the mark of a prosperous economy? To answer this, we need to look at how we got here in the first place. Three economic trends are key: first, asset
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asset:
activo
prices have risen quickly and much faster than wages
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wages:
sueldos
. A decade of low interest rates saw the price of everything from shares
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shares:
acciones
to houses and art soar
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to soar:
dispararse, subir como la espuma
in value. These are the kinds of things wealthy people already have, so it’s a classic case of the rich getting richer. And if you thought interest rate rises might put paid to that, the S&P 500, the US’s principal share index, reached a record high in February 2024.
Second, there’s the increase in corporate profits. Many of the world’s billionaires have made their money running
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to run:
dirigir, administrar
firms, often in industries marked by low competition. Corporations with large market shares
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market shares:
cuotas de mercado
are able to raise prices without it hitting their bottom line
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bottom line:
balance, cuenta de resultados
, as customers have few other places to go. As Oxfam notes, the average global mark-up
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mark-up:
subidas de precio
, the difference between the price of production and the sale price, rose from 7 per cent in 1980 to 59 per cent by 2020.
Third, taxation regimes have generally become less progressive. In 1979 the top marginal rate of income tax was 83 per cent in the UK. In the US it was 70 per cent. Nowadays, the rates are 45 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively. In summary, not only have the super-rich benefited from rising asset prices and higher profits, they are taxed at half the level they were two generations ago.
It’s true that a certain amount of inequality is built into
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built into:
integrado, incrustrado
capitalism — some will work harder than others or be more prepared to take risks. But it turns out that
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it turns out that:
resulta que
such extreme disparities are unnatural, politically dangerous and actually threaten economic stability. There is evidence that unequal societies are more vulnerable to shocks, and more likely to suffer political instability. Research by the International Monetary Fund, not known for its leftie
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leftie:
de izquierdas
sympathies, identified inequality and the loss of worker bargaining power
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bargaining power:
poder negociador
as leading factors in the 2008 crash. Some economists and philosophers, such as Ingrid Robeyns, argue that a hard upper limit on individual wealth is not only morally and socially right, but economically desirable.
So, yes, we should worry about the emergence of the world’s first trillionaire. But preventing it would require some radical changes. It would mean politicians recognising that there is more to taxation than simply raising revenue
+
raising revenue:
recaudar dinero
— preventing extreme inequality is a good thing in and of itself
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in and of itself:
por sí solo
. It would require a new focus on rigorous competition policy to break up and prevent monopolies. It would need corporate governance to change, so that shareholders
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shareholders:
accionistas
aren’t the only priority, and the needs of employees, suppliers
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suppliers:
proveedores
and customers have to be taken into account
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to take into account:
tener en cuenta
, too.
Look back to Rockefeller, though, and there may be grounds
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grounds:
motivos
for hope. The fact that he was part of a cohort of businessmen known as the Robber Barons
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Robber Barons
"Barones ladrones". Este término peyorativo englobaba a un grupo de magnates de la industria y de la finanzas del siglo XIX de Estados Unidos que construyeron grandes fortunas mediante métodos poco éticos, cuando no ilegales, como la explotación de trabajadores, el soborno y la corrupción de las autoridades y, en general, prácticas monopolísticas o de cártel próximas a las de la mafia. Su poder se concentraba en sectores industriales en gran expansión en la época, como la energía, el acero, el alcohol, el tabaco, el ferrocarril o las finanzas.
tells you something about the popular view of their immense wealth. That political discontent culminated in the progressive era, during which competition policy got tough, marginal tax rates headed north
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headed north:
incrementar, subir
, and the rights and power of workers increased. Of course, it took a stock market crash and a depression for the landscape to decisively shift, but today we have the advantage of economic hindsight
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hindsight:
mirada retrospectiva
. The fact that G20 leaders are mulling a global minimum tax on billionaires is a good sign, but it will not be enough. The prospect of the world’s first trillionaire should be a spur
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spur:
estímulo
to act before it’s too late.
Published in The Guardian on 18 March 2024. Reprinted with permission.
