“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.”
Migrants Tear-Gassed at Border Crossing
Trump threatens to close the border completely, despite having no authority to do so.
On Sunday, a group of Mexican migrants reportedly rushed the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego, drawing tear gas from Border Patrollers. Consequently, the crossing was closed for several hours. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen later said the closing of the border was "to ensure public safety in response to large numbers of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. illegally." According to the Washington Post, "At least two dozen tear gas canisters could be seen on the Mexican side of the border after the migrants eventually turned back."
Images from the incident, shot by Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon and showing young children fleeing the tear gas in obvious distress, have elicited outrage across the country. The photos also appear to contradict Republican propaganda claiming the migrant caravan was full of criminals.
Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, condemned the extreme measures taken by border patrol, tweeting:
Tear gas across the border against unarmed families is a new low.— Brian Schatz (@Brian Schatz) 1543185824.0
Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor-elect from California, echoed this sentiment, saying:
These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas. Women and children who left their lives behind -- se… https://t.co/r3SXbDyGGW— Gavin Newsom (@Gavin Newsom) 1543208589.0
On Monday, President Trump addressed the border closing by threatening to close the border permanently and calling for the deportation of the tear gassed migrants.
Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it… https://t.co/IqgnrBTQFl— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1543231181.0
Despite this inflammatory claim, there are no legal provisions that would allow Trump to close the border in its entirety. Additionally, by law, asylum seekers must be allowed to present their case to a U.S. judge if they're able to cross the border. This means that the migrants who were tear-gassed on Sunday were not there illegally at all, and U.S. officials are required by law to consider their claim before deporting them back to Mexico. Yale Law School's Harold Hongju Koh, former legal adviser to the State Department, said that what Trump does not understand "is that everyone crossing our Southern border is not illegally present. Those with valid asylum claims have a legal right to assert those claims and remain."
But as the number of migrants waiting at the border grows and as Trump's anti-immigration policies and rhetoric cause longer and longer delays in the hearing of these cases, illegal immigration actually becomes more likely, not less. Wayne Cornelius, professor at the University of California, San Diego and expert on the border, told the New York Times, "The longer the caravaners stay in Tijuana, the more likely they are to succumb to the temptation to cross illegally into the U.S." So the Trump administration's anti-immigration stance is not only perpetuating a false impression that immigrants at the border are breaking the law, but also making the illegal immigration they're supposedly so opposed to more likely than ever.
Now, Trump is reportedly working with the Mexican government to add further peril and hardship to the journeys of these migrants. Trump tweeted on Saturday:
Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually appr… https://t.co/1rhhYBhKvM— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1543103365.0
This provision, which the new Mexican government is reportedly agreeable to, would further violate asylum laws, which state that the United States must ensure that individuals waiting for asylum are safe not only from a hostile government, but from gangs and other threats. It would be nearly impossible for America to ensure asylum seekers this kind of protection while they're still in Mexico, and it would undoubtedly require a massive allocation of resources to do so. The American Civil Liberties Union immigration attorney Lee Gelernt told the Washington Post on Sunday night, "We believe it would be impossible for the U.S." to ensure asylum seekers safety while still in Mexico.
The truth of the matter is that these migrants are not the villains Trump has made them out to be, as they're merely seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Andrés Medina, 22, who left Honduras to escape gang recruitment and was a part of the group that rushed the crossing, said, "We've got to try one more time, we don't even have weapons." He added, "We just wanted to cross."
Brooke Ivey Johnson is a Brooklyn based writer, playwright, and human woman. To read more of her work visit her blog or follow her twitter @BrookeIJohnson.