Income Inequality Gone Viral in a Pandemic, the Obscene Numbers: Paul Bucheitt for BuzzFlash
December 2, 2020
The pandemic has only increased income inequality at a time many Americans are about to fall off an economic cliff. (mSeattle)
By Paul Bucheitt
Inequality Gone Viral: The Obscene Numbers
In a distressing analogy to the relentless surge of Covid-19, which has disproportionately impacted low-income communities and people of color, there has been an unstoppable transfer of wealth from desperate Americans to the people who already had most of our nation's financial assets.
While the great majority of us have been focusing on the health and well-being — and the very survival — of loved ones, the super-rich have become "pandemic profiteers," isolating themselves from Covid while riding the stock market to its highest-ever level. At the same time we are seeing a dramatic demonstration of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, with the "perfect conditions for governments and the global elite to implement political agendas that would otherwise be met with great opposition if we weren’t all so disoriented."
We need to ask ourselves: In a year of disease and death and destroyed families, should a massive, inexplicable increase in new American financial wealth go to billionaires or to health care workers? Should unearned gains go to the few hundred richest Americans or to the millions of American households who have lost their means of support?
The numbers are shocking. Here's what happened in the year 2020:
An Average of $200,000 Each to the Richest 10% of Americans. In November of 2019 the Wilshire Total Market stood at about $32 trillion. After plunging at the start of the pandemic, by November of 2020 it had risen to $38 trillion. That's a $6 TRILLION overall increase for stockholders. The richest 10% of Americans (about 25 million adults, most of them millionaires (Table 5-8)) own 84 percent (Table 10) of ALL stocks.
An Average of $1.5 Billion Each to the Richest 650 Individuals. Since the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020, the combined wealth of the 650 American billionaires has increased by nearly $1 trillion. A trillion dollars is enough to provide every U.S. household with a survival stipend of nearly $8,000.
An Average of $25 Billion Each to the Richest 15 Individuals.
Bezos, Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, and the eleven other richest Americans had $922 billion around this time last year. As of Thanksgiving Day this year, their wealth had increased by another $375 billion. That's $25 billion more, on average, for each multi-billionaire, although Elon Musk alone has added about $80 billion to his fortune.
An Average of $600 Billion Each to the 5 Richest Tech Companies. In March, 2020 the market capitalization for Big Tech (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook) was $4.1 trillion. By November it was over $7 trillion. A 75 percent increase in under nine months! No one has profited more from 70 years of taxpayer input than these massive technology companies.
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