There are 540 billionaires in America.

[Cyrano]

According to Google:

There are 540 billionaires in the United States, with a combined net worth of $2.399 trillion, according to our 2016 list of the world's richest people.

Two billion dollars is two thousand million dollars. Imagine what you could do with one million dollars two thousand times.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

America is broken. And I don't know if it will ever be fixed.

[pwb]

1. Tax the rich, feed the poor til there are no rich no more.

Ten years after.

[GatoGordo]

25. Rich and poor are relative terms

Venezuela used to have a vibrant middle class. Chavismo came along and leveled the playing field.

Now, depending on who you talk to, Venezuela has 90% living in poverty or, Venezuela has achieved Utopia where hardly anyone is rich.

It's all in the spin.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. So the billionaire class increased by how many hundreds of percent over the last 30 years...

all while the middle class actually got smaller as a percentage of the population and while more slipped into struggling for a living paycheck to paycheck. Something is definitely wrong here. Predatory capitalism at its best!...sarcasm dripping off the walls here...

[Hoyt]

3. Take every penny and it wouldn't even pay 10% of Debt. And that assumes that paper wealth doesn't

Last edited Tue Feb 26, 2019, 09:06 PM - Edit history (1)

decline significantly in value, which it would.

The fact is, we need to increase taxes on just about everyone earning over $45,000 a year to improve healthcare, education, welfare, food, housing, etc. Although the super wealthy ought to come first.

[exboyfil]

12. You are right

We have to work it in all directions. Taxes. Smarter spending. Reduced commitments. VAT, Wealth tax, remove cap on Social Security,

[Hoyt]

22. Exactly, but no one has the guts to talk about anything but taxing the wealthy.

[Yavin4]

16. The debt is meaningless.

A nation's debt is not the same as personal debt.

[Hoyt]

21. Never said it was like personal debt. "Meaningless" is quite naive.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. Richest country in history

Americans have no clue how they are supposed to be living. The wealth generated by their labor is only being realized by the ultra rich. If wages wages would have kept up with wealth growth we'd be living in a totally different society. We'd still have a society where 1 income could support a family of 4 in dignity with a house, 2 cars, vacations, health care, and affordable college. The oligarchs threw that away so a few thousand families could live like kings while the rest of the country scratches and claws to to clothe, feed, and house their families.

It's a shame, and people have lost touch with what America is supposed to be like.

[Yavin4]

17. They "threw it away" because there was no threat from Communism

People forget that following WWII huge populations on the planet lived under Communism, the Soviet Bloc, China, N. Korea, Cuba, and there was real fear that it would spread in Western Europe.

Oligarchs knew that creating a wide, vast middle class in the West was one the best hedges against the spread of Communism.

[Hortensis]

5. Heard @550 a few years ago. National wealth

channeled into their pockets increasingly officially not “American” any more, perhaps?

One of the economists we are all familiar with recently said America has about 70,000 ultra wealthy families. For every billionaire, there are many whose wealth is “only” in the hundreds of millions...

[Initech]

6. A second Great Depression is practically inevitable at this point.

Hopefully we can stop it before it's too late but every day more and more I'm doubting that will happen.

[milestogo]

7. And Trump is not one of them.

[msongs]

8. dang was just a dollar short of making the list lol. nt

[Cyrano]

9. I missed by 39 cents.

Yeah, we're both just kidding. But our country is broken. And far, far too many are suffering.

[crazycatlady]

10. gotta move over for Kylie Jenner

[Ilsa]

11. FALCONS OWNER ARTHUR BLANKBUYS $180 MILLION BOAT ...NFL Yacht Wars!!!

https://www.tmz.com/2019/02/24/arthur-blank-yacht-atlanta-falcons-nfl/

FALCONS OWNER ARTHUR BLANKBUYS $180 MILLION BOAT ...NFL Yacht Wars!!!

 2/24/2019 12:30 AM PST

Falcons Owner Arthur Blank Buys $180 MILLION Superyacht

NFL yacht wars are in full effect ... 'cause just like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder, the mega-rich owner of the Atlanta Falcons, Arthur Blank, just bought a superyacht -- for $180 MILLION!!!

The brand spankin' new 240-ft. yacht -- with 11 cabins holding 23 guests plus 33 crew -- is named DreAMBoat (AMB are Blank's initials) ... and it's insanely beautiful.

There's a swimming pool and hot tub on the ship's deck -- plus a bunch of other bells and whistles -- and Blank's private quarters also has its own private hot tub.

Snip

Blank is just the latest NFL owner to drop hundreds of millions of dollars on a mega yacht ... Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder threw down $100,000,000 on a 305-ft. yacht that has its own freakin' IMAX theatre.

Not to be outdone ... Cowboys owner Jerry Jones dropped $250 MILLION on a 357-ft. yacht with 2 helipads, steam room, full gym and a massage room -- which he named after his wife of over 50 years and counting, Gene Jones.

Snip

[Yavin4]

18. Kind of makes sense in this age of climate change to invest in yachts instead of mansions. n/t

[Ilsa]

19. Especially beach front property or private islands.

Some day, maralago will have scuba tours of their facility for the Orange Menace.

[Yavin4]

20. The smart investment would be in submarines.

Think about it.

[sarcasmo]

13. How man billionaires in the early 80's ?

[Prosper]

14. Taxes can be the salvation.

There is a simple solution to achieving prosperity and the far right has been preaching it forever. Start a business. The only trouble is they don't know who to say it to. The lazy do nothing culprit is money. Make money go back to work and prosperity is imminent. How???? Transactional taxing. Tax the profits of speculative deals so money managers will look for other ways to make money like producing goods and services to sell. The culprits that take billions upon billions of dollars out of the real economy are 3rd party bets on the outcome of non related entities. Derivatives and other gambling instruments. Penalize pure speculative trading and money managers will start looking at businesses that make something to sell. Then the value of stocks will be the earnings and not what a stock could be sold for. Put money back to work and prosperity is inevitable. The purpose of money is to facilitate trading of goods and services. Money was not created to sit idle securing huge positions so a daily profit could collected. Money was made to be spent. Money was not created to be hoarded. Changes could be made to laws that facilitated hoarding money stagnating the economy. Super culprit is the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. The CFMA legalized outright gambling, permitted front running and immensely expanded the definition of trades that could be unregulated. Money: Get back to work.

[fescuerescue]

15. Take it all.

And we could have universal healthcare for the next 100 years.

Problem is, these same 540 are the same people who determine pretty much everything.

[Hoyt]

23. Take the $2.399 Trillion, and you wouldn't even pay for one year of healthcare. Plus, you'd be lucky

to get $1 Trillion because the value of the paper assets, real estate, etc., would drop like a rock for the 540 and the upper 25%. Then, the rest of us would enjoy a dystopian life. Better brush up on farming on a very small plot of land.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

24. Quick back of the envelope math

We spend over 3trillion dollars a year on health care. Where does one hundred years come from?

[Hoyt]

27. Didn't come from me, comes from poster above. It's more like 8 or 9 months.

[panader0]

26. When I hit the PowerBall there will 541!

[HopeAgain]

28. The end of Rome

A society in extraordinary decline.

[ck4829]

29. K&R

[maxrandb]

30. And not even one Batman