The World’s Richest Doubled Their Wealth During Covid
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Bernie Sanders is furious, probably.
The first rule of the wealth gap, is that no one can look upon the wealth gap.
It’s not that looking at the wealth gap isn’t allowed- it is allowed.
It’s just impossible.
Quite some time ago, possibly after Silicon Valley gave rise to the myriad wonders of modern technology, but perhaps before it sold that technology to build the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state, the wealth gap grew beyond the ability of the human eye to perceive it.
The wealth gap can no longer be accurately mapped on a chart, shown on a graph, or rendered in scale. It can’t be a visual during a TED Talk; it won’t fit on a Power Point slide.
The world’s wealthiest, the 1% of the 1%, have so much more money than everyone else on Earth, next to a bar on a graph representing the wealth of the wealthiest, the corresponding bar representing the rest of us would be an infinitesimal pixel too small to be viewed without a microscope.
If, on the other hand, you rendered all the world’s wealth not owned by the world’s ultra-wealthiest, into a bar visible to the human eye, let’s say the size of the period at the end of this sentence, the corresponding bar representing the world’s wealthiest would need to be as tall as the moon. Probably taller. The representation of the wealth of the world’s wealthiest would need to go up, and up, and up, and away into the clouds out of sight.
For one, you’d need a microscope to see it; for the other, a telescope. The wealth gap between rich and poor, as Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed out presciently 9 months ago, has become more obscene than ever.
All this was B.C.- before COVID-19 upended our lives and world economies.
Post-Covid, news that the world’s 10 wealthiest men doubled their wealth during these difficult times is somewhat difficult to countenance. Even the staunchest free-market capitalist feels a bit uneasy about this news.
Never before has the difference between the haves- the 1% of the 1% who doubled their wealth during a global pandemic- and the have-nots been so glaring: “Wealth of 10 richest men doubled in pandemic as 99% of…
