Some of America’s Wealthiest Got Billions Richer in Pandemic
The Claim
The wealthiest Americans got at least $400 billion richer due to the pandemic.
News posted on
Emerging story
On May 21, 2020, Americans for Tax Fairness, an NGO, published a statement calculating that US billionaires had earned $434 billion during the pandemic thus far while the average American suffered. The story was subsequently picked up across mainstream financial news, by politicians like Hillary Clinton, as well as going viral on social media, specifically Twitter.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation into this claim reveals it to be selective. As MarketWatch reported in May, Americans for Tax Fairness exaggerated their numbers by calculating American billionaires’ profits from the bottom of the stock market crash precipitated by the pandemic, not from the peak of the stock market before the pandemic. As such, whatever they have earned since that low point is due to economic recovery. Since the mission of Americans for Tax Fairness is to inspire legislation to increase taxes on businesses and the wealthy to then fund additional wealth-redistribution programs, it would seem they have a vested interest in providing selective information in order to promote their cause. In May, when the claim was initially made, billionaires in America had actually lost $232 billion since the previous peak. Elon Musk and Bill Gates lost $26 billion and $25 billion each respectively.
However, since then Musk's net worth has tripled. Jeff Bezos has increased his net worth by at least $48 billion during the pandemic. But if the public were to wish for Bezos’ earnings to decline they would have to stop buying Amazon products, which hardly seems possible during a pandemic in which traditional retail is afraid of opening its doors.
Since the initial claim was based off exaggerated numbers, and not every billionaire has vastly increased their wealth in the pandemic, we deem the claim selective.
