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As wealth inequality widens and billionaires become increasingly enmeshed with politics, the public is growing more and more disillusioned with the ultra-wealthy, and the role they play in society. Its not just those with low or median incomes who feel that way. A majority of millionaires now say that extreme wealth is a threat to democracy; that the ultra-rich buy political influence; and that political leaders should do more to tackle extreme wealth, like increasing taxes. Thats according to a new poll from Patriotic Millionaires, a collection of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for more progressive taxes in order to close the wealth gap. The poll surveyed 3,900 people from G20 countries who have more than $1 million in assets, excluding their homes. The G20 is a group of 19 of the worlds largest economies plus the European Union that meets to coordinate on global economic stability, trade, and financial policy.Sixty two percent of millionaires polled say that extreme wealth is a threat to democracyan increase from the 54% who thought so in last years poll. More than three quarters say that ultra-wealthy individuals buy political influence. Extreme wealth hurts media, social progress, and ordinary people The polls findings come as billionaires and political leaders convene at the World Economic Forum in Davos to address the worlds major issues. But what if the ultra-wealthy themselves are at the center of those problems? Thats the consensus of poll respondents: 74% say the extremely wealthy leverage the law in their own favor, and 69% say the influence of the superrich over politicians prevents action to address inequality. A majority also agreed that the concentration of extreme wealth is harmful to a fair and factual media; sets back social progress; prevents ordinary people from having a decent standard of living; and even keeps people from making deeper societal connections. A report this week from Oxfam backs those claims. The level of billionaire wealth is higher than at any time in history, Oxfam says, with the 12 richest billionaires holding more wealth than the poorest half of humanitywhich includes more than four billion people. Economically unequal countries are up to seven times more likely to experience democratic erosion than more equal countries, that report found. Oxfam also estimates that billionaires are over 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people, an example of political inequality. It should be obvious to anyone, no matter how wealthy, that extreme wealth inequality is destabilizing democracies, economies, and societies around the world. You dont need a crystal ball, Claire Trottier, chair of the Board of Patriotic Millionaires Canada, said in a statement released with the Patriotic Millionaires poll. Billionaires and politics The growing role of billionaires in politics is more than just perception: It is a fact. In 2000, the countrys wealthiest 100 people donated about a quarter of 1% of the total cost of federal elections, according to the Washington Post; by 2024, they covered 7.5%, even as elections got more expensive. That means about 1 in every 13 dollars spent in 2024s national elections was donated by a handful of the countrys richest people, the outlet wrote. This week alone, Elon Musk donated $10 million to a pro-Trump candidate running in the Kentucky senators race. Even millionaires want to see this influence reigned in. According to the Patriotic Millionaires poll, a vast majority82%of respondents say that there should be a limit to how much money politicians and political parties can receive from individuals. Sixty five percent of respondents also said they were in favor of an increased tax on the very wealthy in order to reduce inequality, fund public services, and address the cost of living crisis. An open letter to leaders at Davos to tax the rich The Patriotic Millionaires poll also comes as nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires have signed an open letter calling on world leaders at Davos to tax the super rich. When even millionaires, like us, recognise that extreme wealth has cost everyone else everything else, there can be no doubt that society is dangerously teetering off the edge of a precipice, the letter reads. You already have a simple and effective solution, supported by millionaires and the public alike, it continues. Stop squandering the time we havetax the super rich. That letter was an effort by Patriotic Millionaires, Millionaires for Humanity, and Oxfam International, and has been signed by prominent names including Mark Ruffalo, Abigail Disney, Brian Cox, and Brian Eno. Ruffalo in particular has been vocal about criticising Trump and the actions of his administration, including the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis. But Donald Trump and the unique threat that he poses to American democracy did not come about overnight, Ruffalo said in a statement. Extreme wealth inequality enabled his every step, and is the root cause of the trend towards authoritarianism were witnessing in the U.S. and around the world. If leaders at Davos are serious about the threat to democracy and the rule of law, he continued, they must get serious about combatting extreme wealth concentration. That includes taxing wealthy people like me too.
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Below, Chris Bailey shares five key insights from his new book, Intentional: How to Finish What You Start. Chris is an author and lecturer who explores the science behind living a more productive and intentional life. He has written hundreds of articles on the subject and garnered coverage in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Harvard Business Review, among many other outlets. Whats the big idea? Most of us struggle with follow-through, not because we lack discipline, but because we dont understand whats driving us and accommodate that which holds us back. When you clarify your core values, lower the friction to getting started, and align small intentions with bigger goals, action becomes more natural and meaningful. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Chris himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Know your 12 values. To be honest, whenever Ive heard the term values in the past, I kind of tuned it out, especially with personal values. What would always come to mind for me were those cheesy corporate exercises where some management consultant comes in and lays down a list in front of you with a hundred values on it, and they say, Pick the 10 that mean the most to you. Most of those are not rooted in science. Theyre not rooted in the psychology of values. But in researching this book, I found that there is real science to be found on the topic of values. There exists science on values that has not only been proven in research but also validated cross-culturally in more than 80 countries across thousands of studies with hundreds of thousands of participants. The latest research shows that there are 12 fundamental human values that we all share in varying amounts. To give you a lay of the land, there are essentially two fundamental motivations we all havetwo axes upon which our motivations fit within. In any moment, were either focused on enriching ourselves or enriching others. Thats the first axis. And the second one is were either motivated to conserve things as they are or we want to change or improve the way that things are. All 12 values fit within these fundamental motivations. Values are, in this way, motivations in and of themselves. As I list them, reflect on which connect most with you. Some might even repel you, and that can be informative as well. Here are the top 12 values: Self-direction cultivating your own thoughts, ideas, and actions. Stimulation seeking novelty. Hedonism pursuing (usually sensory) pleasure. Achievement striving for success through demonstrating competence. Power prestige and control over resources or people. Face preserving your image and avoiding humiliation. Security valuing personal and societal safety and stability. Tradition respect and commitment to customs. Conformity fitting in with rules, obligations, and expectations of others. Humility recognizing your insignificance in the grand scheme. Universalism understanding and protecting the welfare of all people and nature. Benevolence being a devoted and reliable member of the groups you occupy. We are all a different combination of these values. Reflecting on this can let you connect with your motivational core. 2. Shrink your resistance level to getting something done. The science of intention is quite beautiful and powerful, but it shows as well that there are reasons that we procrastinate on the things that we intend to do. Just as there are 12 values, there are essentially six main things that lead us to procrastinate tasks. We often procrastinate a task if it is at least one of the following: Boring Frustrating Unpleasant Far off in the future Unstructured Meaningless The reason for procrastination is usually some combination of these. These reasons are not connected with our 12 values. When something is unstructured and also a bit frustrating and unpleasant, there are a lot of different tactics that we can deploy. One of my favorites is shrinking our resistance level. This comes up often with meditation, but it can work for writing, working out, or finally cleaning up that ugly closet in your basement. What you do is essentially feel out your resistance level to doing that thing. You might think, Hey, do I want to meditate for 40 minutes today? No, no, no, no, no. No way. No way do I want to meditate for 40 minutes. Okay. What about 30? No. Okay. What about 25? No. 20 to 15? I can probably do 15. In this way, you accommodate the resistance level you have toward doing something. There will still be a little bit of resistance, but you gain control. You reconnect with that value of self-direction, which is a very common value overall. You just get a grip over the intentions that you set and begin to shape. 3. Build self-reflective capacity. Buddhist monks observe intentionality but from the direction of the causes and effects that happen within our own minds. After a Buddhist Dharma talk, I asked one of the monks, Where does intention come from? He listed off a lot of sources that were mapped on top of the research. It comes from our biology, right? We set an intention to go to the bathroom on a road trip. It comes from social environments, right? We adopt the intentions of others through phenomenon like social contagion. It comes from conditioning by family and culture, and intentions come from our desire to avoid pain and find happiness. Intention also comes from the lessons we have learned, which shape how we think about and view the world. But the final source that he mentioned was not in the research and it was our self-reflective capacity. Self-reflective capacity is our ability to look within ourselves and reflect on what we would want to do differently and where we truly wish to go. Its where our deepest intentions come from because we can ask questions of our inner world. I have a challenge for you: stop reading for a moment, and set an intention for what you will do next after finishing this Book Bite. Its where our deepest intentions come from because we can ask questions of our inner world. What do you want to do? What do you want to listen to? What do you want to engage with? Who do you want to talk to? An intention will arise when you ask a question of your inner world. What do I want to do next? What do I truly want to get out of doing this current thing? It can come from a question like that, but it can coe from journaling too. These intentions can come from going on long walks and just letting the mind wander. It can come from meditation, which leads us to become more intentional and connect with this self-reflective capacity. It turns out there is actually a lot of research behind this self-reflective capacity, but this frame for looking inward is sometimes where our deepest intentions come from. When you find these intentions, when they arise in your mind, you can go back to the 12 values and think, Oh, this actually does align with what I want to do most or what I value most in my life. Its wild how that naturally happens. 4. Get to know the intention stack. There is a shape to the intentions in our life. Every intention we set is different. Some differ in where they come from, as discussed in the previous insight. Some differ in how long they arewe have an intention to get a promotion in our career, but also an intention to take a morning run. They differ in how strong they arethe strength of an intention is how much we desire doing it. They vary in how deep they are, which is how connected they are with our values, but they can also be nested within one another. We all have these things that were intending to do, these grand goals that we want to achieve, but we dont always make them happen. Why dont we make those happen? Because goals are an intention. An intention is just a plan that were going to do something. There are smaller and larger intentions relative to the goals in our life. Smaller intentions might include our plans for following through on a goal. Even smaller still are the intentions we have at this moment, like finishing reading this Book Bite. You can work your way up in terms of how long the intentions in our life take place. We have the present intentionsthe things that were doing today. We have broader plans, then you work your way up to goals, which are the broader stories of change that were making in our life. And broader than that are our priorities in life, like our health, fitness, and relationships. Above our priorities are (our ultimate intentions) our values. Theyre what were ultimately after in life. An intention is just a plan that were going to do something. Lets say you have a goal right now, like the next intention youre going to do after this Book Bite: dial into a conference call. But many intentions take place over a longer period of time than this. Maybe dialing into a conference call fits with your plan of developing relationships with three new partners in your business, which might fit into your business goal of finding an expansion partner, which might fit into your priority to expand into a new market, which might fit into your ultimate value of accomplishment through work and benevolence through helping others grow, too. 5. Anticipate obstacles. Desire and aversion fluctuate over the timeline of goal attainment, across the various goals that we have. But research shows that from the outset of your next goal, one of the best things that you can do in your head is something called mental contrasting. Essentially, you ask yourself, what obstacles are going to get in the way of me achieving this goal? If you want to work out more, do you have travel coming up? If you want to write a book, are you going to find it difficult to find the time? So maybe you need to wake up earlier. What obstacles will get in the way of you being intentional about the goals that you set? Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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Its simple to accidentally become entranced by an endless loop of videos on Instagram or TikTok. But sometimes, that mindless scroll is interrupted by a reminder that what you thought was a 10-minute break spent on your phone was closer to 30 minutes. Olivia Yokubonis, armed with a kind voice and scientific research, often pops up in feeds on social platforms, gently reminding viewers that they might not remember the video they saw two videos before she appeared on the screen. Yokubonis is a content creator who goes by the name Olivia Unplugged online, making videos to combat overuse or mindless use of social media. For the most part, people who view her videos welcome the disruption from the endless loop of content, treating it as a wake-up call to get off their phones. Other times, they are snarky. People will comment and theyll be like, Oh, (its) ironic that youre posting. And Im like, Where else am I supposed to find you, Kyle? Outside? Youre not outside. You are here, sitting here, she said. For us to actually be seen, we have to be where people are. Yokubonis content responds to the feeling many people have: that they spend too much time on social media or apps. Most people have no clue how much time they spend on social media, said Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne who has been studying social media use for years. Through his research, Turel found that when he presented people with their screen time information, they were practically in a state of shock and many people voluntarily reduced their usage afterwards. Yokubonis is part of a growing group of content creators who make videos encouraging viewers to close out the app theyre on. Some are aggressive in their approach, some more tame; some only occasionally post about social media overuse, and some, like Yokubonis, devote their accounts to it. She works for Opal, a screen time app designed to help users reclaim their focus, she said, but those who engage with her content might not have any idea she is working for the company. Brand logos, constant plugs to download the app and other signs of branding are almost entirely absent from her page. People love hearing from people, she said. Millions of views on her videos point to that being true. Its a fine line and a balance of finding a way to be able to cut through that noise but also not adding to the noise, she added. Ian A. Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology, said he finds this kind of content interesting, but is curious whether it’s disruptive enough to prompt action. He also said he wonders whether those with the strongest scrolling habits are thoughtless about the way (they’re) intaking information. If they’re paying full attention, I feel like it could be an effective disruption, but I also think there is a degree to which, if you are really a habitual scroller, maybe you arent fully engaging with it, he said. I can think of all sorts of different variables that could change the effectiveness, but it does sound like an interesting way to intervene from the inside. With billions of active users across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms, talk of cutting down on screen time is perennial, as is the idea of addiction to social platforms. But theres tremendous disagreement over whether social media addiction actually exists. Is social media addiction real? Researchers, psychologists and other experts agree some people spend too much time on social media, but the agreement tends to stop there. Some researchers question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media, arguing that a person must be experiencing identifiable symptoms, like strong, sometimes uncontrollable urges and withdrawal, to qualify as addiction. Others, like Turel, acknowledge the term seems to resonate with more people and is often used colloquially. Anderson said he recognized the prevalence of casual mentions of being addicted to phones and was curious to see if that talk was benign. A recent study of his suggests the debate extends further than academic discourse. In a representative sample of active Instagram users, Anderson found that people often overestimate whether they are addicted to the app. On a self-report scale, 18% of participants agreed that they were at least somewhat addicted to Instagram and 5% indicated substantial agreement, but only 2% of participants were deemed at risk of addiction based on their symptoms. Believing you are addicted also impacts how you address that issue, Anderson said. If you perceive yourself as more addicted, it actually hurts your ability to control your use or your perception of that ability and makes you kind of blame yourself more for overuse, Anderson said. There are these negative consequences to addiction perception. Cutting down on screen time For those looking to curb their social media habits, Anderson suggests making small, meaningful, changes to stop from opening your social media app of choice. Moving the apps place on your phone or turning off notifications are light touch interventions, but more involved options, like not bringing your phone into the bedroom or other places where you often use it could also help. Plenty of intervention methods have been offered to consumers in the form of products or services. But those interventions require self-awareness and a desire to cut down on use. Content creators who infiltrate social media feeds with information about the psychology behind why people scroll for hours a day can plant those early seeds. Cat Goetze, who goes by CatGPT online, makes non-pretentious, non-patronizing content about artificial intelligence, building off her experience in the tech industry. But shes also been on a lengthy road to cut down her own screen time. She often makes videos about why the platforms are so compelling and why we tend to spend longer than we anticipate on them. Theres a whole infrastructure theres an army of nerds whose only job is to get you to increase your time spent on that platform, she said. Theres a whole machine thats trying to get you to be that way and its not your fault and youre not going to win this just (through) willpower. Goetze also founded the business Physical Phones, which makes Bluetooth landline phones that connect to smartphones, encouraging people to spend less time on their devices. The inside of the packaging reads offline is the new luxury. She was able to build the business at an accelerated pace thanks to her social media audience. But the early success of Physical Phones also demonstrates the demand for solutions to high screen time, she said. Social media will always play a part in our lives. I dont necessarily think thats a bad thing. If we can get the average sceen time down from, if its 10 hours for a person to one hour, or from three hours to 30 minutes, that is going to be a net positive benefit for that individual and for society, Goetze said. That being said, Id love to be the person that theyre watching for those 30 minutes. Kaitlyn Huamani, AP technology writer
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