The three wealthiest men in the United States are as rich as half of the population combined, a new report shows.
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett have a total wealth of $248.5bn.
That’s the same as around 160million Americans combined, the report called Billionaire Bonanza by Inequality.org said.
Bill Gates (left), Jeff Bezos (right) and Warren Buffett have a total wealth of $248.5bn
The trio’s wealth is more than around 160million Americans combined, the report called Billionaire Bonanza by Inequality.org said
Microsoft founder Bill Gates is worth $89m, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has $81.5billion and financier Warren Buffet controls $78billion.
The report using Forbes richlist data also found that the 400 richest people in the US are worth a combined $2.68trillion – around the same as the gross domestic product of the UK.
It says: ‘Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64 per cent of the US population, an estimated 80million households or 204million people.
Warren Buffett attends the Forbes Media Centennial Celebration at Pier 60 on September 19, 2017
‘That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.’
The report advocates a host of punitive tax measures against wealth creators, including increasing capital gains tax and estate tax.
It calls on Trump to drop proposed tax cuts and demands increasing taxes on ‘our wealthiest households’.
Economist Chuck Collins, co-author of the report, said: ‘Wealth inequality is on the rise. Now is the time for actions that reduce inequality, not tax cuts for the very wealthy.’
The left-wing report did not mention that in 2010 Gates and Buffett created the Giving Pledge, a promise to give at least half of their wealth to charity.
Gates alone has already given away $35billion, with at least $8billion dedicated to improving global health.
The report concludes: ‘The elite ranks of our billionaire class continue to pull apart from the rest of us. We have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and power since the first Gilded Age a century ago.
‘Such staggering levels of wealth inequality threaten our democracy, compound racial and class divisions, undermine social cohesion, and destabilize our economy.’
We should stop attacking the rich and instead help the poor. Poverty is the problem – not inequality.
Mark Littlewood, Director General, IEA
The Institute for Policy Studies which was involved in producing the report, claims that inequality is leading to a ‘moral crisis’.
But economists have criticised the focus on inequality which is necessary to provide incentive for innovation and wealth creation, noting that the real issue is poverty.
Mark Littlewood, General Director of the IEA, told MailOnline: ‘This apparent fixation with inequality distracts from what should be the real priority for politicians: how to improve the living standards of the poorest in society. The circumstances and spending power of the poor are far more important than reducing ratios between the super-rich and the rich.
‘There are unfortunately still millions of impoverished people. Rather than focusing on the wealth of the top one per cent, we should be promoting policies such as free trade and open markets that have lifted so many out of poverty already in places like China and India.’
This table shows the top 12 richest people in the world from the Forbes richlist
This table shows how much wealth the richest have in comparison to Americans