Are billionaires a policy failure?

亿万富翁是政策失败吗?| 《经济学人》内幕

Insider

2026-07-29

39 分钟
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It’s lonely being loaded. After years of high inflation hitting living standards, people are looking for someone to blame and billionaires fit the bill nicely. You don’t top a rich list—so the popular wisdom goes—without engaging in some bootlicking, game-rigging or old-fashioned exploitation along the way.  Indeed, many billionaires are unquestionably sketchy. But new analysis from The Economist shows that many others don’t deserve such a bad rap: for the first time, half the wealth of the world’s billionaires seems to be reasonably fairly earned. Henry Curr, Josh Roberts and Archie Hall, three of The Economist’s economics and markets experts, dig into the data and ask whether people should be nicer to the super-rich.
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  • The richest billionaires are richer than ever, but politically, their stock is at an all-time low.

  • While criticizing the Uber wealthy is nothing new for the radical left,

  • billionaires are increasingly the villain even in the story the center left tells to voters.

  • From California to France, calls for wealth taxes are gaining momentum.

  • But are billionaires really a menace to society, or is the outrage overblown?

  • I'm Henry Kerr, and this is Inside Economics.

  • Joining me in the studio is Josh Roberts, our capital markets correspondent.

  • Hi, Josh.

  • Hi, Henry.

  • And Archie Hall, our acting economics editor.

  • Hi, Archie.

  • Hello.

  • So, we're going to examine the growing backlash against billionaires.

  • We're going to discuss what's fueling the anger and then dissect these arguments

  • and ask, do they really make sense?

  • But first, let's start with you, Archie,

  • and please tell us, what's going on with the number of billionaires?

  • How many are there?

  • There's rather a lot of them.

  • I think we've a chart on this showing the sheer increase in the global number