US billionaires' fortunes grow by a trillion

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Dollar bills and gold: The super-rich increase their wealth by around a third in the corona crisis

Photo: claffra / iStockphoto / Getty Images

Elon Musk, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos: According to a study, the billionaires in the USA have increased their wealth by more than one trillion dollars (almost 827 billion euros) since the beginning of the corona pandemic.

While the total wealth of US billionaires on March 18 was around 2.95 trillion dollars, it had grown to more than four trillion dollars by Monday this week, according to a study by the think tank Institute for Policy Studies published on Wednesday (IPS) and the Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) organization.

"Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands," said ATF boss Frank Clemente.

"Their pandemic profits are so huge that America's billionaires could pay for a huge Covid aid package without losing a cent of their previous fortune."

Tesla SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted the greatest asset growth - with a jump from almost 119 billion dollars (481 percent) to 143 billion dollars.

This increase in wealth is more than five times as large as NASA's budget this year.

The study authors point out that Musk got a major public contract some time ago when SpaceX was facing bankruptcy due to failed missiles.

Only Jeff Bezos is even richer, who with Amazon increased his wealth by $ 71 billion to $ 184 billion.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet follow in third to fifth place.

Trillion Income: As Much As $ 3,000 Per Capita

Clemente pointed out that the corona aid package currently being examined by Congress is under a trillion.

According to the study, the billionaires' trillion gain would be enough to pay out one-time corona aid of $ 3,000 to each of the approximately 300 million US citizens.

The study fuels the dispute about a fair tax policy in the USA.

Left-wing US politicians like MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling for higher taxation of the rich in view of the costs of the corona pandemic and growing inequality.

In October, an investigation by the major Swiss bank UBS and the consulting company PwC had shown that the corona pandemic had made the richest people in the world even richer.

Accordingly, the total wealth of the approximately 2200 dollar billionaires worldwide rose to a record value of 10.2 trillion dollars.

UN asks the super-rich for help

Recently there have also been calls from the UN to make billionaires more accountable in view of the global corona crisis.

The head of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, told the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" that he wanted to ask billionaires around the world for money to prevent famine.

Beasley, who was former governor of the US state of South Carolina, emphasized that the number of people at risk of starvation worldwide could double to 270 million as a result of the consequences of the pandemic.

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