Sweden: A Socialist Paradise Overflowing With Billionaires

The country is generating the kind of wealth that raises the risk of an anti-capitalist revolt.

- Ruchir Sharma

Every year I run an analysis of the Forbes rich lists, to spot countries where billionaire wealth is surging as a share of gross domestic product, concentrating in family empires or pooling in "bad" industries better known for corruption than productivity. My working assumption is that the most extreme outliers face the highest risk of anti-capitalist revolt.

In 2025, the warning signs point above all to Sweden. Though still seen by many progressives as a socialist paradise, Sweden saw billionaire wealth rise by four points to 31 per cent of GDP—the biggest increase, and to the highest level, of the 20 major economies in my analysis.

Sweden has 45 billionaires, about 1.5 times more per capita than the US, which is often said to be enjoying a new gilded age. The richest American ever was John D. Rockefeller in around 1910, when his fortune surpassed 1.5 per cent of GDP. No American is close to that mark today. The land of latter-day Rockefellers is Sweden, with seven magnates whose wealth as a share of their nation's GDP exceeds that of Rockefeller at his peak.