From The Guardian:
The three richest people in the US – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people.
Analysis of the wealth of America’s richest people found that Gates, Bezos and Buffett were sitting on a combined $248.5bn (£190bn) fortune. The Institute for Policy Studies said the growing gap between rich and poor had created a “moral crisis”.
In a report, the Billionaire Bonanza, the thinktank said Donald Trump’s tax change proposals would “exacerbate existing wealth disparities” as 80% of tax benefits would end up going to the wealthiest 1% of households.
“Wealth inequality is on the rise,” said Chuck Collins, an economist and co-author of the report. “Now is the time for actions that reduce inequality, not tax cuts for the very wealthy.”
The study found that the billionaires included in Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest people in the US were worth a combined $2.68tn – more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of the UK.
“Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64% of the US population, an estimated 80m households or 204 million people,” the report says. “That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.”
The report says the “billionaire class” continues to “pull apart from the rest of us” at the fastest rate ever recorded. “We have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and power since the first gilded age a century ago.”
Continue reading at the Guardian right here…
Three Americans now control as much wealth as HALF of America
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Luke 4:6-7 (King James Version) explains it in very plain and simple terms, but it’s hard for most people to believe. Actually, most people don’t want to believe it, they want to believe that there’s some other explanation for it.
And the real fun part of it all is how much $$$ they DON’T give to anyone but shove more up their arses……and want more!!!!!
Every dollar you spend is a vote for a product or service. I haven’t found that Microsoft or Amazon provide very good products or services and often all short of other companies so I don’t buy anything directly from either. I’m sure there are companies that Berkshire Hathaway owns a chunk of that I don’t patronize either. I don’t keep my money in banks or much of my assets in currency as I don’t trust the banking industry and the government they serve.
I am always advocating to people to look at where they spend their money and to take their patronage to where it does the best for them. That’s not always to the company that has the cheapest prices. Paying a few cents more at a local store means that the store might still be around a year from now. What good is Amazon when you discover that you didn’t have that pack of toilet paper in the closet that you thought you had? What happens when the local hardware store with real employees closes down and you can’t get a gasket repair set to fix a broken faucet in the bathroom? If you are good, maybe you can find a web site with good enough images to match up the parts you need by eye, but that means you have to wait until they arrive to finish the repair and the parts you receive might wind up being the wrongs ones. I guess you could just buy a whole new Chinesium faucet at the big box hardware store for $50 instead of only paying $5 for the new O-rings.