“What Led To The Rise Of Billionaires? – OpEd”

“What Led To The Rise Of Billionaires? – OpEd” in the Eurasia Review (3.23.2025) by Bhabani Shankar Nayak provides a glimpse into the policies pursued for over 30 years by the US and the global elites to further their interests at the expense of 99% of the people on the globe. He notes the importance of the Washington Consensus, a set of policies to reinforce the dominance of the US dollar and free market ideology. With the power of Washington, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund behind them these policies have been broadly implemented around the world.

What are these policies?

“i) reduce national budget deficit by reducing domestic expenditure and government borrowing for economic stability,

ii) end subsidies to state owned firms, food and fuel consumption,

iii) broaden tax regime,

iv) liberalise market and end government control over financial and other sectors for a free market,

v) adopt single exchange rate led market driven exchange rate to encourage export,

vi) reduce trade restrictions and encourage tariff based trade over quotas,

vii) abolish barriers to foreign direct investment,

viii) privatise state owned enterprises,

ix) abolish policies that restrict competition and finally,

x) provide secure, affordable property rights, incentivise investment and provide access to credit.”

“These policies have successfully achieved their true objective—creating millionaires and billionaires—while simultaneously impoverishing the working class, dismantling the welfare state, undermining democracy and citizenship rights. What was sold as a path to prosperity has widened inequality, concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, and weakened the economic and political power of the states, governments and people in reality. The legacy of the Washington Consensus is not one of shared progress, but of deepened class divides and systemic exploitation. It helped in the rise of millionaires and billionaires.”

Despite claims by proponents of the Washington Consensus that they would lead to accelerated economic growth, numerous studies have shown that the global economy has stalled at a growth rate less than half of that which characterized the period from WWII to 1980. This is in parallel with the real results of “trickle-down economics”¹ of the Reagan-Clinton Era in the US.

The Forbes billionaires list in 2019 counted 607 billionaires in the US. By April 2024, this number had grown by 34 percent to 813. In dollar terms, US billionaires held $3.1 trillion in net wealth in 2019. This figure ballooned by 117 percent to $6.7 trillion by the end of 2024. At the end of 2024, the top 1% of the US population controlled 31% of all wealth. In 1989, the top 10% held about 60.8% of the nation’s wealth, which rose to 67.3% by 2025. In contrast, the bottom 50% of households collectively held just 2.4%of the nation’s wealth as of 2024.²