The problem with taxing the rich
Fiscal systems designed around income and consumption struggle to capture wealth, and billionaires are highly mobile
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WHEN Forbes magazine released its first global billionaires list in 1987, just 140 names appeared on it. The 2025 version featured more than 3,000 people, worth a collective US$16 trillion.
Even allowing for factors such as the rise of China and over three decades of inflation, it is a staggering increase in both numbers and values; the net worth of Elon Musk, judged the world’s richest person in April 2025, was estimated at US$342 billion – compared with US$295 billion for the entire class of 1987.
Globally, the average wealth of the top 0.0001 per cent of the population grew on average 7.1 per cent a year between 1987 and 2024, compared to 3.2 per cent for the average adult, according to Gabriel Zucman, a professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics and at the University of California, Berkeley.
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