Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
If you took all the income from the billionaires and distributed it evenly, the average person wouldn&#x27;t even get a 2% raise. If you took all the wealth and distributed it evenly, the a average person wouldn&#x27;t even get $500.<p>In the US - Billionaires have $1.3T: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;americansfortaxfairness.org&#x2F;billionaires&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;americansfortaxfairness.org&#x2F;billionaires&#x2F;</a><p>That&#x27;s ~$3880 per US person. Globally, there&#x27;s a lot more people, and countries aren&#x27;t as rich as the US.<p>Even if you count their entire change in net wealth in good years as income - their best year ever - during the pandemic - Billionaire wealth increased $240B. That&#x27;s not even $900 per person in the US. Median salary was almost $43k: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Personal_income_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The U.S. Census Bureau estimated,full-time, year round" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Personal_income_in_the_Unite...</a>. That&#x27;s ~2%.<p>This is counting billionaire income and realized and unrealized capital gains - cherry picked to the best year ever. It&#x27;s a massive overstatement.<p>Even if you cherry pick the best 11-year bull run ever - from 2010-2021 - Billionaire wealth increased $2.57T. That&#x27;s $697 per year per person. Barely a 1.5% increase.<p>Even if you try to get exclusionary - let&#x27;s only include workers - not children, retirees, or the disabled or the poor - you get ~$1400 per person per year - a ~3.3% increase.<p>And it&#x27;s a ridiculous idea. If you took all their capital gains starting in 2010 - they wouldn&#x27;t have compounded. Most of the gains wouldn&#x27;t have occurred. You&#x27;d end up with an even smaller number less than 1% for everyone, less than 2% for workers.<p>It&#x27;s not the reason people who work at Google and Intel aren&#x27;t mega rich.<p>And even in the US, Billionaires are definitely not the reason that people who work minimum wage or don&#x27;t work at all are poor.<p>Billionaires are concentrated disproportionately in rich places like the US and the EU. Globally the true picture disputes this article much more. There&#x27;s 5x more people on the planet than in just the US and the EU - but the billionaires there have almost 70% of billionaire wealth.<p>Do billionaires have enough money that it&#x27;s creating systematic problems and we should do something about it? That&#x27;s a different question.<p>They don&#x27;t have so much money that they&#x27;re causing everyone else to be poor.