{"id":53165,"date":"2020-05-11T09:23:58","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T14:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53165"},"modified":"2020-05-11T09:24:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T14:24:00","slug":"amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic-americas-billionaires-thrive-and-prosper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53165","title":{"rendered":"Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America\u2019s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2020\/05\/11\/amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic-americas-billionaires-thrive-and-prosper\/\">Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America\u2019s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although most Americans currently face hard times, with unemployment surging to the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/millions-of-lost-jobs-may-push-unemployment-rate-to-highest-since-great-depression-2020-05-02\">levels of the Great Depression<\/a>&nbsp;and enormous&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldometers.info\/coronavirus\/country\/us\/\">numbers of people sick or dying<\/a>&nbsp;from the coronavirus pandemic, the nation\u2019s super-rich remain a notable exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2020\/05\/01\/us-billionaires-boost-wealth-by-406-billion-as-markets-rebound.html\">Financially<\/a>, they are doing remarkably well. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, as nearly 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the wealth of America\u2019s 630 billionaires grew by nearly 14 percent. During April 2020 alone, their wealth increased by over $406 billion, bringing it to $3.4 trillion. According to estimates by&nbsp;<em>Forbes<\/em>, the 400 richest Americans now possess as much wealth as held by nearly two-thirds of American households combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/billionaires\/\">Some of the super-rich<\/a>&nbsp;have fared particularly well. Jeff Bezos (the wealthiest man in the world) saw his wealth soar between January 1 and early May 2020 to $142 billion\u2015an increase of $27.5 billion. During that same period, Elon Musk\u2019s wealth grew by $11.4 billion to $39 billion and the wealth of Steve Ballmer (ranking sixth in wealth) increased by $8 billion to $66.1 billion. The gains of Mark Zuckerberg (ranking third) were more modest, but his wealth did rise to $79.3 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although some billionaires lost money, this was not likely to put them out on the streets. The wealth of Bill Gates (ranking second) dropped from about $113 billion to $106 billion, while the wealth of Larry Ellison (ranking ninth) slipped from $58.8 billion to $58.7 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During this time of economic crisis, two features of the U.S. government\u2019s economic bailout legislation facilitated the burgeoning of billionaire fortunes: first, the provision of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/money\/news\/heads-we-win-tails-you-lose-how-americas-rich-have-turned-pandemic-into-profit\/ar-BB13duWj\">direct subsidies<\/a>\u00a0to the wealthy and their corporations, and, second, the gift of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/04\/24\/business\/tax-breaks-wealthy-virus.html\">huge tax breaks<\/a>\u00a0to rich Americans and their businesses. Consequently, although the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, stock prices, helped along by this infusion of cash, are once again soaring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America\u2019s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper Although most Americans currently face hard times, with unemployment surging to the&nbsp;levels of the Great Depression&nbsp;and enormous&nbsp;numbers of people sick or dying&nbsp;from the coronavirus pandemic, the nation\u2019s super-rich remain a notable exception. Financially, they are doing remarkably well. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28947,5493,19243,868],"class_list":["post-53165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-coronavirus-pandemic","tag-counterpunch","tag-lawrence-wittner","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53166,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53165\/revisions\/53166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}