This week some of the richest people the world has ever known are meeting in Davos with government and business leaders for the World Economic Forum
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Hi John,
This week some of the richest people the world has ever known are meeting in Davos with government and business leaders for the World Economic Forum. At a time when most people’s lives have got harder, billionaires have been accumulating more and more wealth, at the expense of consumers, small businesses, workers and our environment.
It's obscene. But these gross levels of wealth are just a symptom of a deeply broken system. At root, most of these people have made their wealth from corporations so big and dominant that they can justifiably be called monopolies.
Today, we’ve launched a report, Taken, not earned ([link removed]) , with Balanced Economy Project, SOMO and LobbyControl, which shows just how extreme this monopoly power is. It’s a power which effectively allows these corporations to set their own prices.
The report, covered in The Times today, finds that the biggest monopolies are making massive mark-ups, averaging 50% above the cost of production, which is double the average for smaller companies. That means they’re making a huge amount of profit. It’s rather like we’re paying a private tax to billionaires.
Our director Nick Dearden has made a video explainer of how billionaire wealth is being taken, not earned. Can you watch and share it now?
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This profiteering helps explain why some have become so much richer over the last few years even while most people are struggling. Between 2020 and 2022, billionaires in the food and energy sectors saw their combined fortunes increase by $453 billion – that's a billion dollars every two days. We found that the combined market value of the top 20 corporations is equivalent to the GDP of France, Germany, India, Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom combined.
But the same power that allows corporations to overcharge and profit in this way, also allows them to dictate how our society is organised.
Food giants have huge power to decide what food we eat, where it’s produced, what farmers are paid for it, and how it’s marketed. As well as record high prices for consumers and record low returns for farmers, unprecedented levels of concentration in our food sector have rendered our food system less diverse and more vulnerable; around three-quarters of the food we consume now comes from only twelve plant and five animal species. You can read our full case study on monopolisation in the agriculture sector here ([link removed]) .
Medicine monopolies can decide who gets life-saving drugs and who doesn’t. Between 1995 and 2015 in the US, 60 pharmaceutical companies merged into just ten. Having gained dominance, Big Pharma firms can charge whatever they can get away with for new drugs. The biggest pharma companies have some of the most egregious price markups of any monopolised sector: hundreds of percent – and rising. You can read our full case study on monopolisation in Big Pharma here ([link removed]) .
We’re told we live in a democracy. But in a democracy many of these decisions – that go to the heart of how we live – should be made in an open, accountable and transparent way. They should be made in the public interest. But corporate power is preventing this.
There is no way to build a fairer economy without de-throning these corporations. There’s lots of ways of doing that. But most important, we have to build a movement capable of challenging corporate rule.
It feels like a massive task given the power we’re up against. But it’s happened before, in less promising circumstances. We can do it again.
Please help us spread the word by sharing the video now. Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden explains how monopolies are intensifying inequality and eroding our democracy:
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And if you’d like to go straight to the full report, you can find it on our website here ([link removed]) .
Yours in solidarity,
Daisy Pearson
Campaigner at Global Justice Now
More info
1. Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide ([link removed]) , Global Justice Now, Balanced Economy Project, SOMO, LobbyControl, January 2024
2.World’s top firms use ‘monopoly power’ to inflate prices ([link removed]) , The Times, 17 January 2024
3. Case Study: Big Pharma ([link removed]) , Global Justice Now, January 2024,
4. Case Study: Monopoly Agriculture ([link removed]) , Global Justice Now, January 2024
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