(Mirror Daily, United States) – A recent analysis found that three Americans are as rich as the poorest half of the population in America: Amazon’s boss Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates, and billionaire investor Warren Buffet.
This means that they hold as many assets as 160 million Americans. The three mens combined wealth currently stands at $248.5 billion. Researchers at the Institute for Policy Studies, which conducted the study, believe that the current situation has sparked a “moral crisis”.
A separate report estimates that President Trump’s policies could help widen more the gap between the nation’s rich and the poor. The GOPs tax reform could boost “wealth disparities” as 80% of the new benefits would make the 1% even richer.
“Wealth inequality is on the rise,”
co-author Chuck Collins told The Guardian.
Collins called for a reform that can tackle inequality rather than giving the wealthiest Americans tax cuts.
Billionaires Getting Richer
Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s richest people include 400 persons whose combined fortune amounts to $2.68 trillion, which is more than the GDP of some of the wealthiest Western economies.
The report estimates that the Forbes billionaires own more wealth than 64% of Americans, which makes them richer than the populations of Mexico and Canada combined.
Researchers also found that the income inequality is growing at the fastest rate ever recorded. The last time so much wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of so few people was before the First World War.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller families held such large fortunes from oil, banking, and rail endeavors that President Roosevelt decided to break up the monopolies and boost taxes on the rich in the early 1900s. So, we might as well be speaking about a “second gilded age.”
Image Source: Wikimedia