Nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries have called on world leaders to raise taxes on the wealthiest, warning that extreme fortunes are distorting democracy and deepening inequality.
The open letter, released to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, argues that the concentration of wealth is being used to buy political influence and shape public policy in ways that leave most people worse off.
Signatories include actor and filmmaker Mark Ruffalo, musician Brian Eno and philanthropist Abigail Disney, alongside business figures and inheritors, who say the debate has shifted from whether inequality is rising to whether governments are willing to confront it.
The letter’s central claim is that the “super-rich” are now able to exert outsized leverage over politics, media and technology, and that public trust is fraying as a result. It urges leaders to implement higher taxes on extreme wealth and to treat the issue as a democratic safeguard, not simply a revenue-raising tool.
🧾 What the open letter actually says – and why it matters
The letter does not present itself as a moral lecture delivered from outside the system. Instead, it is framed as a warning from inside it, with wealthy signatories acknowledging that their own class benefits from a status quo they believe is becoming politically dangerous.
In one passage, the authors argue that extreme wealth is “polluting politics” and accelerating social exclusion and environmental breakdown, and they contend that democratic institutions are being weakened as wealth concentrates further.
The timing is deliberate. The annual summit in the Swiss resort has become a symbol of elite networking for critics across the political spectrum, and the signatories are effectively telling politicians: if this week is for “global leadership”, then tackling concentrated wealth should be on the agenda in public, not just in private.
📊 A poll of millionaires: influence-buying fears go mainstream among the wealthy
The letter lands alongside polling commissioned for the Patriotic Millionaires campaign group, which reported that a large majority of high-net-worth respondents believe very wealthy individuals buy political influence.
The survey of 3,900 people across G20 countries with more than $1m in assets (excluding their main home) found 77% agreed that the extremely wealthy purchase political influence, and a clear majority said extreme wealth threatens democracy.
The same polling also found broad support among respondents for higher taxes on the very richest to fund public services, suggesting a notable gap between what many wealthy individuals say they support in principle and what governments have been willing to legislate in practice.
💰 Oxfam’s Davos warning: billionaire numbers and wealth growth accelerate
The letter also arrives as Oxfam publishes new inequality research timed for the summit, saying the global billionaire population has now passed 3,000 for the first time, alongside what it described as an unprecedented increase in billionaire wealth last year.
Oxfam’s executive director, Amitabh Behar, said the scale of the gap between the richest and everyone else is now “beyond comprehension”, and urged governments to implement taxes on extreme wealth and prioritise reducing inequality.
The charity’s argument is straightforward: when wealth grows fastest at the top, societies face higher pressure on public services, greater political volatility and a widening sense that the system is “rigged” – whether or not leaders explicitly acknowledge that as the risk.
🏛️ So what would “taxing the super-rich” actually look like?
Calls to “tax the rich” often collapse into a slogan fight, but the policy menu is real and fairly well understood.
One route is raising existing taxes that disproportionately affect top earners, such as capital gains and dividend taxation, or tightening inheritance tax rules and reliefs. Another is introducing new annual taxes on net wealth above high thresholds – usually targeting assets like shares, property holdings beyond a main residence, trusts and certain private business interests.
Advocates argue wealth taxes are justified because wealth brings power, not just comfort, and that modern economies already tax work more heavily than accumulated assets. Critics counter that wealth is harder to measure than income, that avoidance risks are substantial without international alignment, and that poorly designed systems can create capital flight or legal complexity.
In practice, the political dividing line is less about whether inequality is rising and more about whether governments are willing to absorb the backlash from wealthy donors, influential industries, and parts of the financial sector – especially in countries where political funding and lobbying are deeply embedded in electoral life.
🔥 The Davos paradox: elite platforms, anti-elite messages
There is an unavoidable irony in wealthy signatories using the Davos media moment to amplify a warning about extreme wealth. But that is also part of the point: the message is designed to cut through precisely because it is not coming from people who can be dismissed as anti-capitalist outsiders.
Put bluntly, it is an argument that today’s level of concentration is no longer defensible even to some who benefit from it – and that governments should move before public anger does it for them.
For leaders gathering this week, the test is whether inequality is treated as a headline risk to democratic stability or simply as a talking point padded into a panel discussion.
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