Only fifty people own more wealth than the 165 million ordinary people in the United States combined.
“The United States cannot flourish and remain a strong democracy when very few have so much and many have so little. While many of my colleagues in Congress choose to ignore this, the issue of income and wealth inequality is one of the greatest moral, economic and political crises we face and must be dealt with”.
Today, it is becoming clear that the country, which considers itself the cradle of world democracy, is striving for an oligarchic form of government, according to Sanders’ article for The Guardian.
With a handful of billionaires seizing wealth and power, workers’ families struggle to survive in conditions similar to the Great Depression. 50% of the US population lives paycheck to paycheck. Half a million Americans literally live on the streets, and several million more will soon join them. 92 million people live without health insurance. As a result, the life expectancy of low-income Americans is now about 15 years lower than that of the rich. Poverty in America has become a death sentence, according to the material.
But in another American reality, life is more beautiful than ever. Only 1% of the country’s population owns more wealth than 92%, and the wealth of the 50 richest Americans exceeds the combined wealth of the 165 million poor citizens of the United States.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has been described by many as an unprecedented crisis and millions of Americans have indeed lost their jobs and livelihoods, the fortune of the 650 billionaires has increased by $1.3 trillion over the past year. In 1978, 0.1% of the American elite owned approximately 7% of the national wealth. In 2019, they already owned almost 20%. The two richest men in the United States, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, now own more than 40% of poor Americans.
If income inequality had remained at least the same over the past 40 years, the average American would have made $42,000 more a year. Instead, when corporations began to earn 300 times more, their employees were earning an average of $32 per week less than they did 48 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Simply put, despite a huge technological leap and economic growth, ordinary Americans have become poorer all these years.