Wealthiest Americans Get $195 Billion Richer in Biden’s First 100 Days
by tts-admin | May 2, 2021 |
Simon Hunt and Ben Steverman – Bloomberg April 30, 2021
Joe Biden’s election has done little to slow the inexorable surge of wealth among U.S. billionaires.
In the president’s first 100 days in office, against a drumbeat of calls for the rich to pay more in taxes, the 100 wealthiest Americans added a combined $195 billion to their fortunes, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
The most recent gains have been fueled by the continued rise of the stock market since Biden was sworn in Jan. 20, along with the vaccination program’s fast rollout and a $1.9 trillion government stimulus package. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes have both climbed more than 10% during that time.
Attempts such as Biden’s to refloat the economy can boost incomes and wealth at the very top, said Mike Savage, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics.
“We’ve seen that paradox since the 2008 financial crash with quantitative easing, which has mostly benefited people with assets, inflating their value significantly,’’ Savage said.
The richest 100 made a further $267 billion between the 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration, amounting to a total gain of $461 billion since Nov. 4. From Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration to last fall’s election, those billionaires got about $860 billion richer.
The combined fortunes of the richest 100 Americans have reached $2.9 trillion, greater than the combined $2.5 trillion wealth of the bottom 50% of the U.S. population, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
The rise has been driven by an explosion of wealth among a handful of ultra-billionaires. The 10 wealthiest Americans have added $255 billion since election day, bringing their combined net worth to $1.2 trillion.
The biggest driver of this wealth surge has been tech companies like Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, bolstered by increased online and stay-at-home activity during the coronavirus pandemic. The FANG stocks index has climbed 94% in the past 12 months compared with the 45% advance of the S&P 500.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, has gotten $11.7 billion richer this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, adding to about $120 billion of wealth gains during the Trump presidency. Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth rose $8.1 billion yesterday alone on the strength of Facebook’s first-quarter results.
Google’s Larry Page has added $26.6 billion this year after the California-based company posted record profit last year, while the wealth of Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk has grown $5.1 billion since January.
Finance billionaires such as Warren Buffett and Blackstone Group Inc.’s Stephen Schwarzman have also been major beneficiaries of stock market rises.
Good Fortune
The wealthiest 10 Americans have added almost $150 billion to their fortunes since the start of 2021
In his first 100 days, Biden has moved quickly to propose sharp tax hikes for the rich and programs to funnel trillions of dollars to middle- and lower-class Americans in the form of new infrastructure, social spending and stimulus checks. He laid out those policies in his first address to Congress on Wednesday.
“Sometimes I have arguments with my friends in the Democratic Party,” Biden said. “I think you should be able to become a billionaire or a millionaire. But pay your fair share.”
Under his “American Families Plan” announced Wednesday, the top rate of personal income tax would increase to 39.6% for the highest 1% of earners from the current 37%, while the capital gains rate would be raised to the same level for those earning above $1 million, wiping out the discrepancy between income and capital gains tax rates that has benefitted many of the ultra-rich.
The wealthiest 1% currently pay 40% of all federal income taxes, according to Internal Revenue Service data, an amount that doesn’t include payroll taxes.
“When you ask the American people what they want, they want corporations and millionaires and billionaires to pay higher taxes,” said Erica Payne, founder of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of progressive high-net-worth individuals. “It is politically a winner, it is economically the right thing to do and it is morally a no-brainer.”
Corporate Tax Hike
The White House has also proposed a plan to hike corporate taxes to fund infrastructure spending. In a surprise this month, Bezos issued a statement saying he supports the general idea. “We look forward to Congress and the administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness,” he said.
Conservatives say boosting spending by adding a greater burden on the wealthy can backfire.
“Government investments are often sold to the public with the promise that they will improve lives and improve the economy,” Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, argued in testimony before Congress this week. “In every case, the economic harm caused by the taxes would swamp any of the benefits from the new spending, leaving taxpayers and the economy worse off.”
Despite the pandemic, Fed data show all groups gained wealth last year. The top 1% did best, however, adding $4 trillion in 2020 and bringing their total net worth to almost $39 billion, more than the bottom 90% of Americans combined. Personal incomes in the U.S. jumped a record 21% in March, surging after households received a third round of relief checks.
Source
I’ve been decorating my flat for the last 3 months. I’ve been using Amazon, but they were vital for me to get the materials and paints necessary for the refurbishment. At first I didn’t want to do it, but looked at it like I do eBay. It’s essentially no different, other than buying Amazon Prime, it’s a large storefront, for lots of sellers to advertise their wares. Paying a monthly subscription of £8 allows next day delivery, along with watching videos, listening to music and other things that I don’t bother with.
I don’t wear a mask. I refuse to, so it was really being stuck between the devil and deep blue sea. I made the right choice and although I’m making Jeff Bezos richer, I’m also keeping lots of other businesses in business, during this madness. And I do use eBay, switching between the two for a better deal.
You have to make a compromise. If I’d been stubborn, I wouldn’t be able to decorate my flat, that was badly needed. It also gave me something to do over the lockdown and I’m still doing it.
But what can I say? Yes, I vehemently disagree with the massive wealth increase of the top billionaires during the lockdown, but then I also look at the fact that I had to make a choice in order to get materials and paints. I’d rather order from Amazon, than social distance, wearing a mask bollox.
Any one of these three men could solve America’s hunger problems and another its homeless problems and still remain multi-billionaires, and leave the kind of legacy that gets your likeness put on money and stamps, your name on new buildings and your lifetime remembered for centuries. But no. They don’t care about a historical legacy, only the accumulation of more. Well, that becomes a legacy also.
Everything that has been happening over the past 40 years has been to concentrate the residual wealth of the World into fewer and fewer hands, by the few who have made, manipulated, and control all our laws to serve their own hegemonic interests, using every means illegal to us to deceive and exploit the vulnerable and to further enslave us in their tyrannical clutches. From mass deception, fake science, fake news, brainwashing, bribery, blackmail, debt rigging, monopolies, influence pedaling, all manner of organized crime, child trafficking, destruction of family values, abortion, euthanasian, election rigging, assassinations, murders, coups, and wars, to this very day where all of their evils are manifest in their bio-warfare beast they have unleashed upon us, the true natures of this ungodly and Satanic few enslaving the world are revealed.
The stranglehold on the people continues
The covid hoax is said to be the biggest scam since the holocaust
and each time its the people that pay
time to start hanging the traitors from lamp posts
Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page etc…all jews. You didn’t want to listen to Hitler, so this is the Jew controlled world you get.
it realy makes no diference if you make jeff bezo richer
or an other jew . i dont mask, only when i go into supermarked
to buy food. in my age i dont need anymore anything . if you
go to walmart , aldi or any other supermarked chain you are
always in hands of the wallstreet jew speculants which diktate
that you can only enter with mask and next time with vax certificate.
we were always their slaves on a long line without knowing it.
N O W W E K N O W !
Look….they’re only proposing to increase taxes on the Jewish oligarchs to forestall the possibility of a revolution and not for any other reason.
The amount of resentment against the Jewish business mafia is growing in leaps and bounds….unfortunately no one seems to realise that so many public officials and politicians are actually crypto Jews…..like Biden and Trudeau in North America.They employ this strategy because it would be just too obvious to the public JUST HOW POWERFUL THE JEWISH OVERLORDS ARE.
However even during WW2 there was some knowledge that Churchill was a jew.They were generally unaware that the mass murderer Bomber Harris was a crypto jew….just like HARRIS….Bidens running mate IS ALSO A JEW.
The premier of Tasmania today is a tribe member…..just like the hooked nosed premier of NSW and Victoria (Jewish numbers are concentrated in Melbourne and if Australians are not alert it will become like New York…..a seething multicultural hell hole ruled over by the Jews….yet Americans still believe the Jewish real estate billionaire Trump is not Jewish….yeah right,that’s why he has “retired” to Florida….the home of retired New York jews.(Including the AC/DC lead singer).
Get rid of speculation, corporations, unearned income. It’s part of Admiralty Law and Corporations are not people but a scam from investments (speculation), banking (money and perpetual debt as money is now debt and put on the books as an asset), rid all of the international chamber of commerce which has their own website https://iccwbo.org and you will see global governance in detail. Eliminate intellectual property as invention should be first one to market as the only advantage. Eliminate the Uniform Commercial Code and simplify the overhead for the reasonable man to make a living doing his skill. No man should be dead in the water from this. Extend the partnership laws and make sure that every child is born a citizen regardless of ID, as we are not birthed. Share the wealth in the community, work on cooperative, mutual and municipal aspects of sharing that which we have and remember that w.o. nature, man dies. The militaries and those that profit from it are designed for continual chaos and death and should be a fraction of what exists, no bioweapons, chemical, atomic and the most evil of all, EM systems that Geoengineering the planet is laying down pathogens, synthetic life an heavy metals. End research of the Gnome of any creature and no more slaughterhouse mentality as those countries that have take everything the have nots cannot protect from the vultures of the 1st world thieves. Resource is the value of money over life itself. Turn the system upside down and eliminate those reasons and others that allow those that cannot be human to life itself to be inverted to real value and not gold and silver or stupidity of debt. No person using an old idea, speculation and the services of insider groups executing their contempt for life should exist making the real asset of life is honest work, clean living (no more filth of perversions of every kind that are now pervasive and no executive orders as the monarchy does not exist, nor should any person serving the constituency ever take money for work to be done for the people they represent. The acts of people in power show that few if any should hold power of any form and professionals that follow immoral dictates should be removed from that profession for life.
The head of the snake is religion of many colors but the groups that wish all others to perish, and we know who they are, as it is in their fruit and includes all 3 Abrahamic faiths which in itself is a lie from many places, ages, and works for the advantage of the few, the chosen, the “faithful” (you are what your fruit says you are) as genocide of this group starts from the top down with genocide being the most common aspect of all three of them.
@ klondyke
im shure even hitler did not know that churchill+
roosevelt were jews . if he would have known that
he would have spread his antisemitic propaganda
worldwide and more skilled . and that the most
communist spys + leading communists were jews.
@JAMESW REINHART
DONT HOPE ! THIS PLANET WITH THIS
HUMANITY IS DOOMED !
Dont worry poor Americans you have Nancy Pelosi going into bat every day on your behalf.
Estimated wealth…At least $50,000,000….about the same as the crusading Jewish journalist Barbara Walters.
C’Mon the whole thing is a f**king farce….A JOKE.
Washingstein is as corrupt as hell and the mystery is any Americans buy this elite shell game.