Although U.S. billionaires took a 7.8% hit to their collective holdings between February 2019 and March 2020 (when the pandemic first struck), with their wealth falling from $3.2 trillion to $2.95 trillion, they gained it back and then some over the next 13 months, according to an analysis of data from the Forbes real-time billionaire list by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive organization. The chart below shows just how small the setback was compared to the massive gains that followed. The pandemic economy has led to what experts describe as a “K-shaped” recovery, with the financial fortunes of the haves and the have-nots rocketing in opposite directions. While on the wrong side of the “K,” low-wage jobs have yet to recover from the pandemic, the wealth of the upper half is being launched into the stratosphere. The growing inequality has led progressive Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to call for a wealth tax on the ultra-rich. (One caveat: calculating gains from a starting point in the depths of the pandemic’s economic downturn may distort things somewhat. But the wealth gained by billionaires between February 2019 and April 2021—$1.36 trillion—would still cover 59% of the infrastructure proposal.)
