Gender, skin color, class, and sexual orientation influence the average income and wealth of a given group. | Source: Linartas 2025, Unverdiente Ungleichheit, p. 25.

The richest 1 percent of the world’s population owns 44.5 percent of total global wealth. | Source: Credit Suisse 2023, Global Wealth Report.

In Germany, the wealthier half of the population holds 99.5 percent of all net wealth on an individual level, while the poorer half owns only 0.5 percent. | Source: 6th Report on Poverty and Wealth by the German Federal Government, 2021, p. 44.

As of 2024, Dieter Schwarz and the Boehringer and von Baumbach families collectively own at least 95 billion euros—more than the entire poorer half of the population. | Source: Linartas 2025, p. 35.

The greater the private wealth, the higher the CO₂ emissions. | Source: Chancel et al. 2023, Climate Inequality Report, p. 24.

The richest 10 percent of the global population are responsible for nearly half of all CO₂ emissions. | Source: Chancel et al. 2023, Climate Inequality Report, p. 24.

Median wealth in western Germany is about three times higher than in the east. | Source: Deutsche Bundesbank 2023.

The share of inheritances and gifts in total wealth in Germany has been rising again since the 1970s and now exceeds 50 percent. | Source: Alvaredo et al. 2017, On the Share of Inheritance in Aggregate Wealth.

Life does not start at the same line for everyone: parental background, inheritance, gender, skin color, etc., all play a role. | Source: Linartas 2025, p. 66.

In Germany, a person’s background plays a decisive role in education. | Source: Meyer-Guckel et al. 2021, The Hurdle Race of First-Generation Students in Education, p. 3.

You can barely slip a pie server underneath: In 2023, only 2.3 percent of all inherited wealth was taxed. | Source: Destatis 2023 & Jirmann 2024.

Ideologies, paradigms, and narratives can be imagined as a theater house in which a play is performed—complete with embedded stories. | Source: Linartas 2025, p. 99.

The top inheritance tax rate has fallen sharply since 1919, while Tax Class I has been raised (based on legal texts since 1919). | Source: Linartas 2025, p. 169.

Tax losses due to tax evasion amount to 125 billion euros—over 2,000 times more significant than losses from welfare fraud. | Source: Murphy 2019 & German Federal Government 2021.

The trickle-down effect does not exist. It is a myth. | Source: Linartas 2025, p. 223.

Wealth inequality in Germany is extreme. | Source: Schröder et al. 2020, Millionaires Under the Microscope.

Inequality in business assets is even more extreme: the richest 1.5 percent own more than 86 percent. | Source: Data from Schröder et al. 2020, calculations by Linartas 2025.

The amount that privileges for the ultra-rich have cost us in inheritance tax since 2009 is outrageous. Every day, it increases by millions of euros. | Source: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, as of April 19, 2025.

Wealth distribution has only taken place within the richer half—both in Europe (UK, France, Sweden) and in the USA. | Based on Piketty 2022, A Brief History of Equality, p. 167.

The United Nations have formulated the reduction of inequalities as an independent sustainability goal of the 2030 Agenda, No. 10: Inequality should be reduced within and between countries – “Leave no one behind!”

The richer half of Germans has 99,5 percent of the total wealth, the poorer half possesses 0,5 percent.

In Germany, 74 percent of academics and 21 percent of children of non-academic parents go to university.

The richest 1 percent of the world’s population owns 43.3 percent of all wealth.

252 men have more wealth than all 1 billion women and girls in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, combined. | Source: Oxfam 2022.

If there were equal opportunities, people would have the same positions at the start line of life. But it is of great importance in what family one is born into, whether male or female, what religion one belongs to etc. | Idea of the representation is based on The Guardian 2019.

Class and gender relations, ethnicity and race have an impact on how high the average income of the group of people is.

It is about 2,200 km from Cologne to Lisbon. For a human chain with a distance of 1m (between the persons) you would need about 2.2 million people. All these people together have as much wealth as the one person at the end of the chain. | Source: Oxfam 2020; own calculation.

Global income inequality can be compared to the shape of a champagne glass. The richest upper fifth of the world’s population gets four out of five sips – leaving very little for the others. | Source: Eklockwood 2015.

The two richest German families own with 71.6 billion euros more than 41.5 million people. Calculation: Net wealth in private households is 14 trillion euros, of which less than 0.5 percent are owned by the poorer half of the population. | Source: Linartas 2021.

The CEO of VW, Herbert Diess, earned around 9.9 million euros in 2019. For comparison: Angela Merkel received 473,040 euros in the same year, while the average salary of a German was 46,560 euros and a person working full-time with the minimum wage earned 20,000 euros. | Sources: Kewes 2020, Pospiech 2021.

Every year, around 400 billion euros are inherited and donated. The amount is equivalent to more than 10 percent of GDP and is more than twice as high as the combined spending on education by the federal, state and local governments. | Sources: Statista 2023, Statista 2023 and DIW 2017.

From 2009 to 2020, 40 cases involved the transfer of assets worth at least 250 million euros to a child under the age of 14. On average, they paid 1 percent in taxes. | Source: Jirmann 2022.

Inheritance tax should actually be progressive. However, because of tax privileges for the overly-rich, those who inherit the most pay the least. | Source: Zeit online/Bach 2021.

Between 2009 and 2020, 40 transfers to children had a total value of 33.3 billion euros and 99 percent remained tax-free. | Source: Jirmann 2022.

In 2021, more than one in five children lived in poverty – that is, nearly 2.9 million children. | Source: Bertelsmann Stiftung 2023.

This is how much the privileges of the overly-rich have cost us in inheritance tax in Germany since 2009. | Sources: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung – 21.01.2023.

This is how much the privileges of the overly-rich have cost us in inheritance tax in Germany since 2009. | Sources: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung – 12.04.2023.