news-queue:

Two years ago this week, shortly after President Donald Trump issued a proclamation declaring “A National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak,” under 45,000 Americans were infected. The pandemic death toll was still below 500. But the economic ramifications were already being felt, as fears about the rapid spread of the disease were leading to mass layoffs, stock-market turbulence, and genuine concern about whether Americans would be able to put food on the table and pay the rent.

But it was a different story for the very rich. They were about to experience a redistribution of wealth that would see their fortunes skyrocket at an astronomical rate. While the pandemic has been hard on the vast majority of Americans, it’s been nothing but good times for the billionaire class.

Elon Musk was worth $24.6 billion when Trump issued his pandemic proclamation in mid-March of 2020. Today, he is worth $234 billion—an 851 percent spike that adds up to roughly $209.4 billion. During the same period, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin doubled their wealth, to nearly $114 billion and $109 billion, respectively. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos enjoyed a more modest increase in his fortunes, gaining a mere $52.1 billion during the period. But Bezos still finished this remarkable run for the billionaire class as the second wealthiest man in America, with a net worth of $165.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine’s latest study of “The World’s Real-Time Billionaires, Today’s Winners and Losers.”

Indeed, Musk and Bezos have over the course of the past 24 months grown so rich that they can casually rocket into space in a Billionaire Boys Club game of atmospheric oneupmanship.

While almost a million Americans have died from Covid-19 over the span of two traumatic years, and while tens of millions of Americans have experienced financial hardship and uncertainty as a result of the economic troubles that extended from the pandemic, America’s billionaires have experienced an unprecedented run.

Americans for Tax Fairness‘s latest assessment of the condition argues that “U.S. billionaires’ wealth continues to soar above the misery.” ATF explained:

[As] of March 10, their collective wealth has shot up by $1.7 trillion, or 57 percent, since the pandemic emergency was proclaimed in mid-March 2020. Their total wealth reached $4.6 trillion, up from $2.95 trillion on March 18, 2020…. The number of U.S. billionaires increased by 15%, from 614 to 704.

Globally, during the course of the pandemic, Oxfam estimates that “[a] new billionaire has been minted every 26 hours, as inequality contributes to the death of one person every four seconds.” The growth has been particularly pronounced in the United States, where ATF has argued that the $4.6 trillion in assets controlled by this country’s 704 billionaires is “one-third more than the collective $3.4 trillion net worth of the entire bottom half of American society, or some 65 million households.”

Read More