Super Rich Top Unprecedented $10 Trillion Net Worth Thanks to COVID-19
Make no mistake, the government’s reaction to COVID-19 — shutting down business, forcing people to state home, all the while granting monopolies to massive chains like Amazon, Walmart, etc. — has decimated the middle class and pushed the already-struggling poor that much deeper into despair. But you won’t see the owners of those monopolies complaining as they have seen their wealth soar to unprecedented highs.
As the rest of the country struggles to pay their mortgages, has their businesses shut down, and descends into poverty, COVID-19 for the super rich has been a record setting windfall. Four of the most controversial billionaires on the planet, have seen their wealth increase by over a combined $100 billion in just the last 10 months.
Since the COVID-19 lockdowns began, Jeff Bezos has seen his net worth shoot up by nearly $70 billion. Bill Gates, who has been embroiled in controversy and has somehow become the mainstream media’s go-to “expert” on COVID-19, has seen his net worth increase by nearly $10 billion. As his platform censors any information that challenges the establishment’s narrative on COVID-19, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth increased by $20 billion. And, as his platform also censors information like Facebook, Larry page has seen his profits from Google add $5 billion to his net worth.
The combined net worth of just these four men is nearly half a TRILLION dollars.
While these four people own a significant portion of all the wealth in the world, they are not alone. As Techspot points out, a study by Swiss bank UBS and accounting firm PwC found that at the start of April, global billionaire wealth stood at $8 trillion. By July, following the height of the coronavirus pandemic, it had reached $10.2 trillion. The previous peak was $8.9 trillion recorded at the end of 2017.
Josef Stadler, the head of UBS’s global family office department that deals directly with the world’s richest people, said: “Billionaires did extremely well during the Covid crisis, not only [did] they ride the storm to the downside, but also gained up on the upside [as stock markets rebounded].”
While getting rich is certainly not a crime, the means by which many of these tech and retail giants have made their gains are not exactly due to hard work. Through years of lobbying, these companies have positioned themselves in such a way that when the government uses taxpayer dollars to launch “stimulus” programs, the common man gets the crumbs that fall from the table while the super rich get that much richer.
As the super wealthy game the system to buy back stocks using government stimulus discounts, they are able to socialize their losses on the backs of the American taxpayer. That number is currently sitting at over $27,000,000,000,000 and counting.
The spike in billionaire wealth comes amid an unprecedented economic crash. As part of the citizen “stimulus” package, Americans received just $1,200 which amounts to roughly $5.50 per day since we began “flattening the curve.” Considering the government-granted position these billionaires have thanks to years of lobbying, the $1,200 doesn’t even make up the ‘bread’ in the fabled “bread and circuses.” Sadly, the masses are too busy fighting over their political football team to even realize the situation we are facing.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses across the country have closed their doors—forever. In states with the strictest lockdown measures, like New York and California, some estimatesshow upwards of 60% of small business closing their doors forever.
As the release of Trump’s tax records showed the world last month, this problem is systemic and is setup to benefit the elite while using the poor and middle class as a tax farm.
According to an analysis of tax data by the University of California at Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman for their book “The Triumph of Injustice,” in 2018, billionaires paid 23% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes, while the average American paid 28%.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, David Cay Johnson, pointed out, the result of such a government system are,
“policies that take from the many and redistribute to the already rich few through stealth techniques that rarely make the news but can be found in the public record. Among these policies are a failure to enforce the laws of business competition, severe restrictions on unions and subsidies galore for big companies.”
When the topic of the ultra-rich controlling elite is brought up, most of the time the free market gets the blame. But most of these opinions fail to take the role of the state into consideration.
“Such massive inequality reflects not market economics but political influence that tilts the economic playing field,” explains Johnson. “And because of their political influence, those at the very top get tax favors, especially the deferral of taxes into the distant future, which transforms the burden of taxes into a bonanza of increased profits.”
The reason that nothing ever seems to get accomplished in Washington D.C. is because your elected officials have no loyalty to you. That’s why Trump and other billionaires can carry over loses for decades but everyone else cannot.
As we’ve seen from nearly every political candidate in the last century, the “promises” made on their campaign trails are but fleeting memories once they get into office — Trump included. After all, how can a politician keep true to their campaign promises when they are busy creating and passing into law, loopholes and subsidies for the very small group of people who put them in power?
The only solutions proposed by those within the system to offset the ruling elite and their fleecing of the citizens is, ironically, more legislation — because it’s worked so well in the past right?
Attempting to change the system by using the criminals within the system is akin to asking a mugger to stop mugging you.
The good news is that people are beginning to understand this exercise in futility and they are creating and operating systems that exist outside of the state-controlled monopoly. Bitcoin is an excellent example.However, as long as we keep arguing over which elite billionaire will rule over us we can expect this system of wealth redistribution to continue until the middle class is entirely wiped out. For our species to have any chance on this earth, we must start thinking about more peaceful ways of going about things, and stop justifying the use of violence in all circumstances, even soft-core violence like taxation.
Originally published by Matt Agorist at The Free Thought Project.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.