These three billionaires turned out to be richer than half of the US population

Forbes magazine again counted other people's money and thought about it: there is clearly something wrong in the country of social equality and democratic values.

The first three people from the list of American billionaires — Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos — turned out to be the owners of more wealth than there is in the savings of half of the US population, that is, 160 million people.

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In October, Forbes published another rating of American billionaires, which was headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett. Their total wealth is estimated at $ 250 billion. If we take the poorest half of the United States, 160 million people, then their total capital will not be able to exceed this amount.

According to the latest data, Bezos owns 95 billion dollars, Gates owns about 90 billion, and Buffett's capital is 79 billion.

At the same time, the rich continue to get richer: while the magazine's editorial staff was making a rating, the combined fortune of Bezos, Gates and Buffett grew from $248.5 billion to $263 billion in a month.

The report notes that the total wealth of the 25 richest billionaires in the United States, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google creators Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is estimated at one trillion dollars, which is more than the total wealth of 56% of the US population (178 million people).

Sergey Brin, developer and co-founder of Google search engine ($39.8 billion) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ($56 billion).

At the same time, the state of the average American family, not taking into account the cost of the car, is about 80 thousand dollars.

To narrow the gap between the poorest and the richest, as indicated in the report, two key decisions need to be taken. First, do not exacerbate inequality with tax breaks for the rich, the authors of the study write. Secondly, they propose to fight the "concentration of wealth" — with the help of the same taxes.

The study notes that all billionaires in the top 10 are white. After all, there is a huge differentiation of income in the United States. Blacks and Latinos collectively have only about 5% of the total wealth in the country. Whites own 87%.

The publication estimates the fortune of 400 richest Americans since 1982. A fortune of $100 million was enough to get into the first rating. However, in 2017, the threshold reached a record 2 billion.

According to economist Thomas Piketty, the United States is becoming a "hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power."