this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
317 points (98.8% liked)

News

23627 readers
2449 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Billionaires now control 1 out of every 25 dollars of American wealth.

Over the past years in the U.S., everyday Americans have been increasingly crushedunder greed-driven inflation and debt, with homelessness hitting record highs. But as this modern affordability crisis has rocked households across the country, billionaire wealth has skyrocketed — and has now hit an all-time high, a new analysis reveals.

As of this month, the U.S.’s 806 billionaires are worth a collective $5.8 trillion, meaning that they control 1 in every 25 dollars of American wealth, according to an Americans for Tax Fairness report released Monday. 

Due in part to the 2017 tax overhaul by Republicans, led by Donald Trump, this small group has seen an explosion of wealth in an extremely short amount of time. 

Since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, U.S. billionaire wealth has doubled, from an already staggering $2.9 trillion. In 2017, none of the richest Americans were centi-billionaires, meaning that they did not have over $100 billion; now, the top 10 U.S. billionaires are all centi-billionaires, according to the report.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ApostleO@startrek.website 6 points 8 months ago

Billionaires now control 1 out of every 25 dollars of American wealth.

1/25=4%

According to Google, there are 735 billionaires in the US, and the US population is 336,269,260. That makes Billionaires about 0.000002% of the population.

And they control 4% of the wealth. (And that's probably not counting money they have hidden and sheltered.)

For reference, 4% of the population would be 13,450,770.

So 735 people have as much wealth as would be held by about 13.5 million people, if all wealth was distributed evenly. So each billionaire would be worth about 18,000 people.

But, it's even worse in our current distribution:

Due to this influx to the very top, these 800 individuals now collectively control 1.5 times more wealth than the entire bottom 50 percent of American households, who share $3.7 trillion between 65 million households.

And, since money is free speech, that means these 735 billionaires have 1.5 times the voice of 65 million people, the majority of Americans, combined.

We've gone full oligarchy.