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.
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime” ... French novelist Honoré de Balzac
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.”
Jimmy Breslin's Enduring Legacy
The legendary journalist was remembered in Colin Broderick's 'The Writing Irish Of New York'
Colin Broderick's new book, The Writing Irish of New York, tells the tales of a talented pool of New York writers who share Celtic blood. In this anthology, pages are split between titans like Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald and lesser-known writers and journalists who spent their careers in the literary trenches. Legendary journalist Jimmy Breslin is decidedly in the latter camp.
Breslin was born in Queens, NY, and his formative years were spent in an unstable, single parent home. It was during this time that he found his voice, developing an off-the-grid style of reporting that gained him a reputation of championing the stories of ordinary, everyday people. Breslin later went on to use his much coveted column to report on stories of working class Americans.
One of Breslin's most famous pieces was published in the New York Herald Tribune, 55 years ago, on November 26th, 1963, days after the assassination of John F Kennedy. While journalists from all across the world descended upon the capital to report on the loss of America's innocence, Breslin went off the beaten path and befriended a gravedigger at Arlington National Cemetery. He spent his time with Clifton Pollard, a 42-year-old WWII Veteran who was earning a mere $3.01 an hour to prepare the final resting place of his fellow serviceman, the President.
By detailing the simplicity of Pollard's life– the attention and care he took to complete such a harrowing task and the deep honor he felt while doing so–Breslin memorialized JFK in a way no other journalist was able to do at the time. He shied from sensationalizing the tragedy and let the sadness be conveyed through an everyday American, someone the country could truly relate to.
The Writing Irish Of New York by Colin Broderick
It can be hard to put that kind of grief into words, to paint sadness over text, but Breslin did just this. He saw a story where no one else was looking. He saw the necessity in detailing the grief of a nation through the eyes of a man that felt a sense of privilege in serving his Commander-in-Chief one last time. Through Breslin, a gravedigger's tale became one of the most beautiful and moving pieces of journalism ever published, at a time when every other reporter in the world was covering the same beat.
Never far from a story, Breslin was also present when tragedy struck again at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June of 68'. America lost another great leader, and the journalist was on the ground, living through the emotion and making sure the story was documented. He later found himself surrounded by controversy again, when the notorious murder, The Son Of Sam, wrote him a handwritten letter which was delivered to his desk, taunting Breslin and complimenting him on his reporting of the killer's crimes. Breslin fought his way to the heart of a story yet again on a cold December night in New York City. Up against a tight deadline and covering what was no doubt the story of the year, Breslin managed to speak to the police officers who answered the 911 call on the night John Lennon was murdered. In his column about the tragedy, he humanized the beloved Beatle, focusing less on the loss of legend and more on the tragedy of yet another person killed on the tough streets of New York City.
Breslin's body of work is a biography of the everyday. He reported on some of the most significant crimes of the last century, and never failed to delve into the real issues at the heart of each tragedy. Breslin earns a place in The Writing Irish Of New Yorknot because of his celtic blood, but for the bravery with which wrote.