The wealth of U.S. billionaires continues to soar amidst the coronavirus pandemic. According to data collected by Forbes and analyzed by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality (IPS) the growth is 70% or $2.1 billion.
Leading all other billionaires is Elon Musk of Tesla and Space-X whose wealth increased eight-fold which catapulted him to the position of the wealthiest billionaire with $209.4 billion, surpassing Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
While the wealth of the capitalists have surged 89 million Americans have lost their jobs during the pandemic, over 44.9 million have been sickened by the virus, and over 724,000 have died from it.
While the billionaires continue to extract and re-invest their massive profits, the workers do not see any increased standard of living. As of the third quarter of 2021, median weekly earnings increased only .7% while prices increased 5.3% from the previous year. The capitalist economic system allows for the private owners of the means of production to amass massive fortunes as they exploit the workers in production. Only the elimination of the capitalist mode of production will end the absurd appropriation of socially produced wealth by a handful of capitalists.
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