Billionaires now control 1 out of every 25 dollars of American wealth.

Billionaires now control 1 out of every 25 dollars of American wealth.

Over the past years in the U.S., everyday Americans have been increasingly crushedunder greed-driven inflation and debt, with homelessness hitting record highs. But as this modern affordability crisis has rocked households across the country, billionaire wealth has skyrocketed — and has now hit an all-time high, a new analysis reveals.

As of this month, the U.S.’s 806 billionaires are worth a collective $5.8 trillion, meaning that they control 1 in every 25 dollars of American wealth, according to an Americans for Tax Fairness report released Monday.

Due in part to the 2017 tax overhaul by Republicans, led by Donald Trump, this small group has seen an explosion of wealth in an extremely short amount of time.

Since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, U.S. billionaire wealth has doubled, from an already staggering $2.9 trillion. In 2017, none of the richest Americans were centi-billionaires, meaning that they did not have over $100 billion; now, the top 10 U.S. billionaires are all centi-billionaires, according to the report.

  • @ApostleO@startrek.website
    6•3 months ago

    Billionaires now control 1 out of every 25 dollars of American wealth.

    1/25=4%

    According to Google, there are 735 billionaires in the US, and the US population is 336,269,260. That makes Billionaires about 0.000002% of the population.

    And they control 4% of the wealth. (And that’s probably not counting money they have hidden and sheltered.)

    For reference, 4% of the population would be 13,450,770.

    So 735 people have as much wealth as would be held by about 13.5 million people, if all wealth was distributed evenly. So each billionaire would be worth about 18,000 people.

    But, it’s even worse in our current distribution:

    Due to this influx to the very top, these 800 individuals now collectively control 1.5 times more wealth than the entire bottom 50 percent of American households, who share $3.7 trillion between 65 million households.

    And, since money is free speech, that means these 735 billionaires have 1.5 times the voice of 65 million people, the majority of Americans, combined.

    We’ve gone full oligarchy.