Why is the gap between the rich and the poor increasing? With the disaster, the rich have even more money? Let us pay attention to the situation of wealth inequality and understand the civilian economic crisis caused by the virus.
Washington, D.C. (Merxwire) – COVID-19 has hit the global economy, but many billionaires are not only untouched, their wealth has increased! According to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) report, since March 18, 2020, the total assets of American billionaires have increased by $565 billion, and wealth inequality has become increasingly serious. The assets of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos alone have increased by $36.2 billion during this period.
U.S. stocks rise
According to the analysis of the report, the reason for the sudden increase in the wealth of American wealthy individuals was that after the US stock market fell in February, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors issued trillions of dollars to rescue the stock market, which caused the US stock market to rise and the wealth of wealthy individuals to rise.
This phenomenon not only fails to show the economic situation caused by the virus crisis, but also deepens the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. For example, Amazon’s stock price has risen by 47% since mid-March; Facebook’s stock price has also risen to the highest in history.
The IPS report found that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net assets increased by as much as 30.1 billion US dollars. In addition, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Googel founder Larry Page & Sergey Brin, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, their average net worth by $13 billion.
Civilians are getting poorer
According to a report by ADP National Employment Report, the number of layoffs by private companies in the United States was as high as 20.2 million in April, the largest number in 18 years, and the scale of unemployment was more than twice that of Great Depression.
Data released by Eurostat, the average unemployment rate in EU countries was 6.4% in March and 6.6% in April; European Commission estimates that Eurozone’s GDP will shrink by 7.75% this year, the worst record ever.
According to CNN Business, that from March 18 to the present, nearly 43 million US citizens have submitted application forms for unemployment benefits. The lower the salary, the greater the impact on workers, especially in industries such as tourism and services. Coupled with ethnic riots, the United States has more and more problems.
Wealth is never equal
Although this is not the first time humans have suffered from a large-scale infectious disease in history, the infectious power of COVID-19 is significantly higher than SARS and MERS, causing nearly 1 billion people to home quarantine.
Human economic activities have been greatly affected. Many office workers can still perform work through the Internet during the quarantine period, but other workers are not so lucky. The economic production of many industries such as catering, tourism, and retail has almost stopped, making survival more difficult.
COVID-19 has caused the global gap between rich and poor to grow wider and wider. The rich can spend their home quarantine in the sun, but the poor not only lack medical supplies, but also cannot afford basic daily necessities. Once people who cannot work are infected with the virus, huge medical expenses will become their nightmare. In the face of the virus, human beings are still unequal.