“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime” ... French novelist Honoré de Balzac
No one disputes the fact that the global pandemic threw us all under the bus. Some of us got sick. Some of us lost loved ones. Others lost jobs. Others reaped the benefits. At Inequality.org, journalist Chuck Collins recently shared some statistics concerning the ever-increasing disparity between billionaires and average folks. In a nutshell, the rich not only got richer – they got a lot richer.
Pandemic profiteers like Musk and Bezos made out like bandits and the figures are jaw-dropping. At the start of the pandemic, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was worth about $25 billion dollars; two years into the pandemic his wealth had surged to $255 billion. When last checked – March 18, 2024 – Musk is at $188.5 billion. That’s more than a seven-fold increase in four years.
At the same time, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ wealth has soared from $113 billion to 192.8 billion – even after donating tens of billions to charity and paying out tens of billions more in a divorce settlement with his now ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott.
Speaking of Ms. Scott, she’s the only billionaire on the 2020 top 15 wealthiest Americans list to see a decline in her wealth decline from a net worth of $36 billion in 2020 to $35.4 billion due to her generous giving to charity. At least someone has their values in check.
In 2022 the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics summed up one study of COVID’s impact on those of us who were just trying to keep our heads above the water line:
The pandemic disrupted lower-paid, service-sector employment
most, disadvantaging women and lower income groups at least
temporarily, and this may have scarring effects...Higher-paid
workers tend to gain more from continuing opportunities to
telework. Less-advantaged students suffered greater educational
setbacks from school closures. School and daycare closures
disrupted the work of many parents, particularly mothers. We
conclude that the pandemic is likely to widen income inequality
over the long run, because the lasting changes in work patterns,
consumer demand, and production will benefit higher income
groups and erode opportunities for some less advantaged groups.
The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics got it right. Income inequality grew like cancer cells in the course of the pandemic. Collins’ data tells us that in March 2020 the U. S. harbored 614 billionaires worth $2.947 trillion. In March 2024 the number of billionaires had grown to 737 billionaires worth $5.529 trillion.
If not always illegal, this vast increase in billionaires' wealth has deadly consequences.
In 2022 Oxfam International published Inequality Kills, a report detailing how inequality “is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds. This is a conservative finding based on deaths globally from lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate breakdown.”
Oxfam’s International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher made it quite clear just what led to that perilous state of affairs:
Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets
to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the
pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom. Vaccines
were meant to end this pandemic, yet rich governments allowed
pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off the supply to
billions of people. The result is that every kind of inequality
imaginable risks rising. The predictability of it is sickening.
Fixing – or at least ameliorating – inequality is no easy task. The recommendations of the Peterson Institute for International Economics include: governments need to address inequality directly and specifically; taxes and spending programs must be progressive and benefit others than the wealthy; novel approaches must replace tired, by-the-book policy.
Whatever remedies one favors to deal with the obscene inequality of wealth here and elsewhere, the time to act is now. As Oxfam’s Bucher says: “The consequences of it kill.”
A New Type of Mannequin: The Rise of the CGI Influencer
Clothing companies have found a brand new way to market their wares.
In the years since Instagram's founding, the site has slowly transformed from a forum where users post pictures instead of status updates into a whirlwind of native advertising. Influencers jostle for space on cluttered timelines, repping the newest clothing or gadgets, showing off luxurious lifestyles to their many followers. While celebrity endorsements aren't anything new, the way in which advertisers and PR wonks have found an avenue through which to manufacture celebrity definitely is. It's a new spin on direct marketing, giving consumers a glimpse into the interior lives of the well-manicured and put together characters one might see in a commercial. It's also incredibly effective, and has that magical effect which used to be a monopoly held by Super Bowl sponsors; people actually look at the native advertising on influencers' pages voluntarily.
Still, there are certain associated costs that go along with giving influencers free merchandise. Sending products out is never a guarantee either, since influencers are inundated with packages from various marketing teams. Worst of all however, if this person is a reviewer, there's always the chance they publicly criticize the very thing they were meant to advertise. Recently, a Los Angeles-based startup called Brud came up with an innovative solution, simultaneously eliminating every problem one might associate with dealing with influencers. They built one in house using CGI technology. They even gave it a name. She's called Lil Miquela.
While it's relatively clear how advertisers benefit from CGI influencers, a reasonable question for someone unacquainted with Lil Miquela's account is: what's the appeal for the audience?
Lil Miquela
Brud was careful in their cultivation of Lil Miquela's "interests" and use the account to voice support for various social causes such as Black Lives Matter and LGBT rights, gathering followers through the use of popular hashtags and social movements. They also spend a lot of time writing convincing copy that accurately mimics the style of many Instagram photo captions. That said, for all of her realistic qualities, Lil Miquela is distinctly not human, and from a consumer standpoint this presents certain issues. For one, it's fairly difficult for some to trust a computer generated image's testimonials on fabric softness or style. There's something decidedly inauthentic about taking fashion advice from something that's never really worn clothing. That said, this hasn't stopped brands such as Fenty, Diesel, and Moncler from allowing various CGI influencers to rep their wares.
Secondly, CGI influencers, by virtue of not actually existing, occupy a nebulous legal space. Last year, the Federal Trade Commissions updated their guidelines surrounding influencers, requiring Instagrammers and other social media users to indicate whether or not their posts have been paid for, typically with the hashtags #sponsored or #ad. It's still unclear whether or not CGI influencers will be bound by these same rules.
As companies begin to catch onto this growing trend, many are expecting this niche to explode, with individual influencers being crafted to tout certain brands. If this happens however, advertisers risk over-saturating social media with manufactured accounts. CGI influencers could turn into glorified wrapping paper for what would essentially be very expensive and carefully designed banner ads.
That said, improvements in CGI technology offer companies a different means of advertising their products: licensing the CGI rights to various celebrities for use in online marketing. While Morgan Young, CEO of Quantum Capture, thinks certain questions regarding rights management will have to be answered before this occurs, it could be only a matter of time before a cartoon version of Reese Witherspoon appears on your Instagram feed and discusses the various merits of buying a Fossil™ watch. This technology is still in its infancy, but the development of CGI in the advertising space is certainly interesting. Depending on how the FTC chooses to regulate CGI influencers and whether these influencers are accepted into the mainstream, we could be witnessing the birth of an entirely new industry.