Stock Market Soars, Billionaire Wealth Swells By $1 Trill As Food Lines Stretch Far As Eye Can See

[appalachiablue]

- Food Line: thousands line up in cars in Texas to receive food before Thanksgiving. CBS News, Nov. 16, 2020.

- 'Stock Market Soars and Billionaire Wealth Swells by $1 Trillion as Food Lines Stretch 'As Far As the Eye Can See.' "During the pandemic that has taken everything from millions, U.S. billionaires have now collectively gained over $1 trillion." Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams, Nov. 25, 2020.

llustrating the intensifying inequality that has defined life in the United States for the past four decades—spotlighted throughout the coronavirus crisis—the total amount of wealth gained by the nation's 650 billionaires since March surged past $1 trillion amid Tuesday's record-breaking day on Wall Street, which coincided with reports that 26 million Americans are experiencing hunger.

"During the pandemic that has taken everything from millions, U.S. billionaires have now collectively gained over $1 trillion," the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank, said Wednesday. The increases in billionaire wealth continue to defy gravity in the real economy where millions have lost their jobs, health, and livelihoods," said Chuck Collins, a scholar of inequality at IPS who has been tracking the evolution of billionaire wealth throughout the coronavirus crisis, in a statement on Wednesday.

Last week, Common Dreams reported on the latest IPS study, entitled Billionaire Wealth vs. Community Health: Protecting Essential Workers from Pandemic Profiteers, which highlighted a "delinquent dozen" of CEOs who have enjoyed record-breaking financial gains as millions of workers suffer amid an intertwined public health and economic crisis. Many of the corporations and their billionaire owners who were featured in the latest IPS analysis made a repeat appearance in another report on pandemic profiteering released last week.

As Public Citizen showed, the executives of some retail giants have raked in loads of cash this year while treating their essential frontline employees as expendable, taking away hazard pay even though profits and infections are soaring.

Tuesday marked a disturbing milestone, Collins pointed out, since that was the day that U.S. billionaires surpassed $1 trillion in collective gains since March. As the Dow Jones crossed the record-breaking 30,000 mark, the combined wealth of the nation's 650 billionaires neared $4 trillion...

More,
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/25/stock-market-soars-and-billionaire-wealth-swells-1-trillion-food-lines-stretch-far



- Ahead of Thanksgiving, millions of families are in need of food assistance due to Covid-19 related layoffs and the expiration of federal unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and 649 other billionaires in the U.S. have amassed a combined $1 trillion in gains since the pandemic began in March 2020.

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[Alacritous Crier]

2. K&R

[KPN]

3. K&R. The other great divide. It strikes me that this is the

a divide that serves to fuel all others. It isn’t the absolute cause, but it sure doesn’t help.

[OldBaldy1701E]

4. Don't get me started. (n/t)

[SunSeeker]

5. Let the Senate vote on the House's rescue bill, Mitch!

[Duppers]

6. Important post.

K&R