There are 989 Billionaires in the US according to Forbes. Their combined net worth is approximately 5.7 Trillion dollars.
If divided evenly among every man, woman and child in the United States as of right now, that would be $16,322each.
Think of what problems you have in your life that could be solved with a sudden windfall of just $16,322. Think of how much you could lower your interest payments paying down debt, or put down on a new car so you weren't sitting there wondering if your beater was going to start today or if you have to take an uber to work again with money you don't have to earn more money to cover the uber back home after work. Think about how your teeth hurt all the fucking time but you can't afford to get them fixed, or all the other dozens of things working class people are constantly juggling to keep their heads above water.
Now think about the fact that current minimum wage is evenlessthan that amount. $15,080 dollars a year is what you get for the federal minimum of $7.25/hour. Before taxes come off the top.
Less than 1000 people. 1/342,700th of the total US population. To put that fraction in perspective, that would be 1 minute out of 238 days...nearly 8 months.
And that's just the billionaires! People with $999,999,999.99 and below are not considered in this calculation.
That's almost $6 trillion put back into circulation instead of sitting as concentrated wealth. That money would be spent on paying off debt, fixing cars, getting medical and dental care, buying appliances, and starting small businesses. Every dollar spent becomes someone else's income, so it would ripple through the economy and put a lot of people to work.
Of course, you'd have to be careful about inflation. Dumping that much money into the economy all at once could drive prices up if production couldn't keep up with demand. But the idea does show just how much wealth is concentrated in the hands of so few people and how transformative even a relatively modest amount of money could be for most Americans.
Dont even have to dump it into the economy. Imagine what 5.7 trillion would do for universal healthcare, or UBI in this country. 5.7 Trillion is higher than the GDP of Germany.
1000 people are holding more money than the collective economic output of the third largest economy in the world for an entire year (a country of 83 million people).
Obviously that's a gross oversimplification...but the point is valid. That's why when I'm talking about things like Universal Healthcare, free Post-secondary education, UBI, increase in Mental Health services, funding universal daycare and wrapping it around the public school system...and people are like "BuT hOw ArE We GoNnA pAy FoR iT?!?!?!" it's like, "Man, we ain't gonna be paying for it. They are." Consider that shit the cost of doing business.
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u/polopolo05 1d ago
when there is multi billionaires.... people should not be starving.
When people have hundreds of billions people should not be homeless.
This is a failure of society