Jeff Bezos’s space adventure is a sign that the time for a wealth tax has come

Amazon’s boss has spent a bit of his $186bn of wealth on a space trip, but thousands of people don’t want him back. The super-rich must beware a backlash, writes Phil Thornton

Bezos inspects New Shepard’s west Texas launch facility before his Blue Orbit rocket’s maiden voyage (EPA)

What will historians call this epoch when they look back at the incredible wealth generation of the early 20th century? The Gilded Age captured the Victorian era’s entrepreneurial energy, and the Roaring Twenties the kind of reckless financial gambling seen in The Great Gatsby.

Leaving aside unsavoury monikers such as the Plague Age, perhaps the Catapult Era captures the combination of the vast leap in wealth achieved by a select few and the way they spent some of said wealth.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of online retail giant Amazon, who was recently declared the second-richest person in the world, has decided to spend some of his estimated $186bn on the first human space flight, to be launched by his company Blue Origin next month. One as-yet-unnamed astronaut won an auction for a seat on the flight with a $28m bid.