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Top 5 Wealthiest Individuals. Source: Forbes <\/p>\nElon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on June 12. His net worth reached roughly $1.1 trillion after SpaceX raised $75 billion in a record initial public offering (IPO).<\/p>\n
The jump has widened an already historic gulf between the ultra-rich and everyone else. Forbes data shows a 1,464,078% wealth gap between the average billionaire and the average American.<\/p>\n
How Elon Musk’s Trillion Stacks Up <\/p>\n
Musk now sits far ahead of his peers. His fortune tops the combined wealth of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison, according to Forbes. The same data tracks the top 10 billionaires at $3.1 trillion.<\/p>\n
Top 5 Wealthiest Individuals. Source: Forbes <\/p>\n
The billionaires added $68.2 billion in a single day. Meanwhile, most households saw little change in their own wealth. The concentration extends worldwide.<\/p>\n
The richest 10% own 75% of global wealth, while the bottom half holds just 2%, according to the World Inequality Report.<\/p>\n
\u201cFewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires now control three times more wealth than half of humanity combined. Within most countries, the bottom 50% rarely possess more than 5% of national wealth,\u201d the report revealed.<\/p>\n
Distribution of Global Income. Source: World Inequality Report <\/p>\n
In January, Oxfam reported that the 12 richest billionaires hold more wealth than the poorest half of humanity (over 4 billion people).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world has reached a critical juncture. Extreme inequality has reached the point where the super-rich can rig elections and economies, and deepen their power through politics, the media and institutions of justice. Meanwhile, billions of people face avoidable hardship and the erosion of their civil and political rights, and dissent and protest are crushed by governments the world over,\u201d Oxfam noted.<\/p>\n
In the US, the top 1% holds 31% of wealth, compared with 2.6% for the bottom half, per WealthVieu. Musk’s wealth surge after SpaceX\u2019s Nasdaq debut widened that imbalance.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers Push to Tax the Rich <\/p>\n
The record fortune landed during a squeeze on US households. Inflation hit 4.2% in May, a 3-year high amid the US-Iran war. Americans have spent $57.7 billion more on gasoline and diesel since the Iran war erupted on February 28.<\/p>\n
That works out to roughly $440.6 per household. National gas prices now sit at $4.1 a gallon, according to a live tracker run by Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs. Meanwhile, US lawmakers have renewed their push for wealth taxes.<\/p>\n
“Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth. We need a wealth tax,\u201d Senator Elizabeth Warren posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on June 12. His net worth reached roughly $1.1 trillion after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[350,42,7041,32517,226906,43,40,38,41,39,32066],"class_list":["post-491768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-elon-musk","tag-headlines","tag-larry-ellison","tag-larry-page","tag-national-wealth","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wealth-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}