American Billionaires’ Wealth Grew Substantially While the Middle Class was Pinched Economically in 2021
Jose Nino
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America’s leading billionaires saw their wealth substantially balloon over the last year. According to John Binder of Breitbart News, these billionaires grew their wealth by over $340 billion in the last year. In the same period, the American middle class’ wealth shrank.
According to a report by CNBC, American billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Steve Ballmer, Larry Elison, and Warren Buffett witnessed their combined wealth grow to about $341 billion in 2021.
Elon Musk, the cofounder of Tesla, grew his wealth by $121 billion over the past year. This increase in wealth was the greatest for any other billionaire in the world. In the meantime, Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos saw his total wealth grow to $195 billion.
Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame, now holds approximately $140 billion in wealth. Google cofounder Larry Page possesses around $130 billion after increasing his wealth by $47 billion in 2021. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has a net wealth of roughly $128 billion due to a wealth increase of $24 billion in 2021.
In this period, the American middle class has experienced a significant drop in wealth. Binder noted that the middle class includes 77.5 million American households with an annual income of $27,000 to $141,000.
According to a report by Breitbart News in October 2021, the top 1% of income earners in America now possess more wealth than the entire American middle class. This report highlights that the middle class’s national wealth fell to just 26.6% while the top 1% ‘s share of wealth has grown to 27%. This marks the first time in American history that the top 1%’s share of wealth has outpaced the middle class’s share of wealth.
Since 1991, the 20% of American income earners have witnessed their share of national wealth grow by roughly 10 percentage points. In the meantime, the middle class has seen its share of corporate, private business, and real estate equities fall over the last 30 years.
According to analysis by several economists, the wealthiest Americans were paying lower annual tax rates than all other Americans in 2019.
In 2018, for example, the wealthy paid an average tax rate of only 23%. To put things perspective, America’s wealthiest individuals were paying a tax rate of 70% in 1950.
All things considered, the U.S. needs a simplified tax code, common sense deregulation of the economy, immigration restriction, and targeted infrastructure investments in the Midwest in order to protect America’s working and middle classes. This will allow for America’s economy to grow while also serving Middle American economic interests.
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