The results are in: This is who the Oxfam community crowned as the biggest offenders for playing games with our future.
This summer, Oxfam launched the 2024 Inequality Games, an Olympics-inspired competition to crown top performers around the globe. But instead of honoring solidarity, respect, and fair play, our Games highlight the most greedy and shameless billionaires and corporations out there—the world champions of inequality.
Like the Olympic Games, the stakes are high. A handful of men control corporations that impact millions of people globally. Seven of 10 of the world’s biggest corporations have either a billionaire CEO or billionaire as their principal shareholder. By squeezing workers, dodging taxes, and privatizing the public sector, corporations are using their power to direct profits to the super-rich.
Who are these billionaires and corporations fueling Olympic levels of inequality? And which mega-billionaire has the ignoble honor of earning the all-around medal? You voted and we tallied. Here’s who grabbed gold:
Event: The Wealth Sprint. Who has grown their fortune the fastest?
Winner: Elon Musk
Tesla shareholders recently agreed to give Musk a $47 billion pay package. That’s billion with a “b.” Sharply increasing billionaire wealth and rising corporate and monopoly power are deeply connected. The profits of mega-corporations benefit shareholders at the expense of workers and ordinary people. This kind of corporate and monopoly power has exploded inequality.
Event: Amazon Marathon. Which of this mega-corporation’s practices is most egregious?
Winner: Amazon
Voters cited underpaying workers as the most outrageous, though Amazon’s practices of enforcing extreme productivity standards and surveilling employees are similarly bad. The exorbitant profits Amazon (and Walmart) have reaped over the years can be directly linked to their ability to undercut competition, exploit workers, and make ever-more lofty commitments to low prices, convenience, and speed.
Event: Polluter Pole Vault. Which billionaire is taking climate change to new heights?
Winner: Carlos Slim
The Mexican businessman is responsible for 6,974,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year. Very rich people like Slim emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon via their lifestyles, but also through the large carbon-emitting corporations in which they’ve invested. It’s a clear example of how inequality and the devastating changes in our climate are linked. In 2019, the richest 1% were responsible for 16% of global carbon emissions—the same as the emissions of 5 million people!
Event: Tax Hurdles. Which billionaire has most effectively avoided paying his share of taxes?
Winner: Jeff Bezos
According to a 2021 analysis by ProPublica, an investigative journalism nonprofit organization, Bezos paid 0.98% in taxes from 2014-2018, although in that period his wealth had grown to $99 billion.
Event: Wage Diving. Which state has the most workers earning less than $17 an hour?
Winner: Mississippi
34% of Mississippi’s employees earn that amount, which categorizes them as low-wage workers. But they’re not alone. There are more than 39 million low-wage workers in the U.S. Women and people of color, especially Black and Latin or Hispanic workers, are most impacted by low wages and stagnating minimum wage policies. Raising the federal minimum wage would help: It has remained at $7.25 since 2009.
Event: Monopoly Ball. Which global corporation is the most anti-competitive?
Winner: Amazon
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon in September 2023 for illegally maintaining monopoly power. They say Amazon’s practices “allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.” Seventeen states joined the suit.
Event: Worker Exploitation Relay. Which companies best trample the rights of their workers?
Winner: Amazon and Walmart
Each company’s constant monitoring of warehouse employees has created environments where workers are pressured to keep up with inhuman, unsustainable production standards. As a result, warehouse floors have become incubators of injury, sustained by automation, surveillance, and workplace cultures of intimidation. According to recent research, 74 percent of Amazon workers reported feeling pressure to work faster. At Walmart, 57% of workers reported barely having time to use the bathroom.
Event: Yacht Racing. The ultimate one-upmanship: Who bagged the biggest boat?
Winner: Jeff Bezos
This one takes the super-sized cake. Bezos’s superyacht Koru, which is more than 400 feet long and cost an estimated $500 million to build, emits 7,154 tons of carbon dioxide a year. In 2019, the emissions of super-rich individuals like him were enough to cause 1.3 million deaths due to heat.
Event: Mental Gymnastics. What’s the most cynical statement from a billionaire?
Winner: Elon Musk
In response to Democrats’ 2021 proposal for an annual tax on billionaires’ unrealized capital gains, Musk said, “Eventually they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.” The tax would have impacted only people with $1 billion in assets.
The post-game analysis
The actions of each of these billionaires and corporations exacts an immense toll on the rest of the world. But the man taking home the best all-around title? Jeff Bezos. His personal lifestyle and corporate investments make him the number one champion of inequality.
Since 2020, the five richest men in the world (which includes Bezos) have doubled their fortunes and are now worth more than $800 billion. During the same period, almost five billion people have become poorer. The ultra-rich have created a new era of consolidated corporate power that gives them immense wealth and excessive control over our lives and economies. Here are six ways corporate power is making inequality worse.
To end extreme inequality, governments must radically redistribute the power of billionaires and corporations back to ordinary people. We’re urging President Biden and Congress to address this crisis of inequality and rein in billionaire and corporate power.