The Institute for Policy Studies, according to which the greatest beneficiary of the pandemic is Jeff Bezos. The luck of the patron of Amazon it increased by 65%, or by 73.2 billion. from the beginning of the crisis to the record figure of 186.2 billion, with which he holds the title of richest man in the world. They can’t complain either Elon Musk, whose fortune grew 247% to $ 92 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook’s number one, despite criticism and scandals, has seen its wealth grow 84% to 100.6 billion.
The staggering earnings are contrasted with the nearly 200,000 deaths in the United States from the coronavirus and the empty coffers of Americans and individual states, showing an expansion of inequalities. A gap that grows and brings to the fore the debate on the taxation of scraps.
New Jersey has just approved an increase in taxes on the rich with the aim of repairing public finances overwhelmed by the virus emergency. In Congress, Democrats Bernie Sanders and Alezandria Ocasio-Cortez instead proposed a one-off tax equal to 60% of the earnings of billionaires between March 18 and the end of the year to help the middle class cover health care costs. A measure that, if it were to take effect, would cost Bezos 42.8 billion and Musk 27.5 billion.
“Politics has turbo-charged the billionaires’ economy, and now the same politics has stalled on aid to the real economy,” says Chuck Collins, director of the Inequality Program at the Institute for Policy and co-author of the Billionaire Bonanza report. 2020. “Clearly the priorities of politics are turned upside down”.
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