As per a report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the net worth of America’s billionaires, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Elon Musk of Tesla on a combined basis, surged by close to 10% during the ongoing pandemic crisis.
The surge in the wealth of these Americans coincides with the time when as many as 22 million US citizens claimed unemployment benefits, reported Reuters.
The wealth surge of these billionaires has come in as these founders share stakes in some of the companies that amid the current crisis are in high demand such as technology-oriented and stay-at-home companies including Zoom that in last few weeks saw sharp rally. “This is the tale of two pandemics, with very unequal sacrifice,” said Chuck Collins, a co-author of the report.
Further as per the report, among the wealthiest billionaires in the US, 34 saw their wealth surge by tens of millions of dollars during the period between January 1 and April 10, 2020.
In accordance with the report, net wealth of eight billionaires including Zoom Communications founder Eric Yuan, Musk and Jeff Bezos among others inched higher by $1-billion.
