Billionaires are retaining a much larger share of everything that is owned - Andy Brown

As for love, that also can be difficult to come by. I don’t know about you, but the look Melania gives her husband whenever she consents to being dragged out on stage doesn’t entirely convince me that she is filled to over brimming with a deep and sincere emotional attachment to her man.

They also say that the rich and the poor are always with us. Which is almost certainly true. Yet what has changed in recent times is the degree of the wealth that those who own valuable licences and resources are able to command and the consequences of that concentration of wealth for the rest of society.

According to Forbes 2025 global rich list, Elon Musk possesses a net worth of around $342bn. Mark Zuckerberg is the second richest person with $193bn whereas poor old Jeff Bezos has to get by on only $192bn.

These are truly eyewatering amounts of money that go way beyond any legitimate reward for hard work and talent. The share of wealth of the top 1 per cent of people has increased rapidly. Their capabilities haven’t. In 1990 they owned 16.6 per cent of the declared assets in the US whereas in 2022 it was 26 per cent. Are billionaires really deserving of an extra 10 per cent of everything?

I say declared assets for a reason. The data I’m quoting came from income tax returns - but over the last 30 years there has been a massive increase in the use of offshore bank accounts and crypto currencies. Tax avoidance has become normalised for anyone rich enough to afford a good accountant.

The consequences of that for the rest of us isn’t just that the very wealthy are retaining a much larger share of everything that is owned. It is also that they are paying a lower percentage of income tax because governments think they can’t collect money from the richest because they will simply move it abroad and hide it. The burden of taxation has fallen on the middle classes and on ordinary working people at the same time as government services have been starved of money and have declined in quality.

Those who have these extraordinary amounts of money can deploy them as they see fit and that includes using some of their small change to buy influence over political decisions and to control large sections of the social and physical media.

Elon Musk bought twitter for $43bn and seems to be unconcerned that he has wiped out much of the value. What he wanted was the ability to control the algorithms that determine what messages users of that platform see. It is a very effective way of influencing opinion which has been used to spread the message of the Tate brothers about women wanting to be abused and of the German AFD. Users of the platform have been told that London is now under the complete control of Islamists, there is no free speech in the UK, and Nigel Farage is too liberal and woke.

Jeff Bezos’ contribution to our collective enlightenment has been to purchase the Washington Post and make sure it didn’t print anything which would undermine President Trump’s election or challenge the myth that he is on the side of the poor and oppressed. In reality Trump’s tariffs are mainly paid for by ordinary US consumers whereas his tax cuts primarily go to his very rich friends.

Government spending cuts underway in the US are also very informative. So many public employees have been arbitrarily sacked that simple services like cleaning the toilets in national parks have been closed. By contrast massive contracts have been awarded to the very rich supporters who back the President. Elon Musk may have lost money on X and been damaging Tesla but he has secured a lot of fresh contracts for Space X.

Control over global satellites by a bonkers multi millionaire with evil intentions is no longer a Bond villain film plot. Elon’s already got there.

There are, of course, examples of some very wealthy people who have done good and noble things with the money they acquired. Bill Gates and his former wife have devoted a lot of time, energy and finance to trying to protect children from the ravages of disease and hunger. Which compares well with Robert Kennedy’s determination to prevent children from being protected from measles and polio.

Their good work risks being swamped by the determined efforts of other very wealthy people to take control over ever more sectors of society.

In such circumstances we need a more reasonable redistribution of wealth. Time perhaps to raise taxes on enormous properties owned by the ultra rich in the UK. They can’t move their mansions abroad.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.