America’s billionaires could pay for most of Biden’s coronavirus response plan with just their pandemic profits

 

Americans need to get priorities straight!

TAKE CARE OF AMERICANS FIRST!

STOP REWARDING THE WEALTHY PIGS WHO GIVE NOTHIG IN RETURN.

https://www.marketwatch.com/.../americas-billionaires...

MARKETWATCH.COM

America’s billionaires could pay for most of Biden’s coronavirus response plan with just their pandemic profits

The combined wealth of billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg jumped almost $1.1 trillion since March

This is rich: America’s billionaires have earned enough money during the pandemic to pay for all of the working family relief in President Joe Biden’s coronavirus response plan.

That’s according to the latest analysis by the Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies, which drew on Forbes data to determine that the nation’s 660 billionaires saw their fortunes balloon by a collective $1.1 trillion over the past 10 months.

That windfall covers more than half of Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which some Republican lawmakers are calling too expensive as Congress works to negotiate a deal. But it’s enough to fully fund the proposed $1,400 in direct payments to individuals, $400-a-week supplements to unemployment benefits and the expanded child tax credit contained in the relief for working families included in Biden’s stimulus plan, the new report claims.

In fact, the analysis argues that the collective $1.1 trillion gain in wealth that these billionaires have enjoyed since March 18, 2020 could pay out a $3,400 stimulus check for every one of the roughly 331 million people in the United States, or more than $13,000 for a family of four.

The report names a number of tech CEOs in particular, including Amazon’s AMZN, 1.40%  Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s TSLA, 4.68%  Elon Musk and Facebook’s FB, 2.42%  Mark Zuckerberg, for enjoying “astonishing increases” in wealth since March 18, 2020 — the date when most federal and state economic restrictions were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, marking the unofficial start to the pandemic in the U.S. That’s also the date when Forbes released its annual billionaires report for 2020, providing a baseline for financial gain over the subsequent months. So on March 18, 2020, the collective net worth of the billionaires in the U.S. was just under $3 trillion dollars; it rose almost 40% to hit $4.1 trillion by Jan. 18, 2021.

Musk’s meteoric rise briefly made him the world’s richest person earlier this month. A year ago, Musk was worth about $27 billion, and barely cracked Bloomberg’s list of the 50 richest people. But Tesla saw its shares spike more than 700% last year, and the company joined the S&P 500 in December following five quarters of positive earnings.

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