April 24, 2020
Let’s Stop Pretending Billionaires Are in the Same Boat as Us During This Pandemic
While millions of Americans were being thrown out of work by the coronavirus, the super rich saw their wealth increase 10 percent.
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In this pandemic, we are unfortunately not in the same boat.
Most Americans don’t even have a canoe. But some billionaires have taken to the high seas in their yachts – literally – to ride out the pandemic. While ordinary workers get furloughed or laid off in record numbers, billionaires as a group are actually seeing their wealth increase.
Between 18 March and 10 April 2020, over 22 million Americans lost their jobs. Over the same three weeks, my co-authors and I find in a new study for the Institute for Policy Studies, US billionaire wealth increased by $282 billion — an almost 10 percent gain.
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Read the full article at The Guardian.
Originally in The Guardian.
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