Michael Bloomberg, (right) founder of Bloomberg LP, and Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, at the 10,000 Small Businesses (1OKSB) partnership event in London on December 14, 2016.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Mixed feelings about extreme wealth
At the same time, most Americans have a love-hate relationship with extreme wealth.
“There’s an increasing disconnect,” noted the Harris Report: Six out of 10 adults want to be billionaires one day. Meanwhile, 40% said they despise billionaires. Many also said that billionaires have a responsibility to make society better, but they are not doing enough.
A mobile billboard in Washington, DC calling for higher taxes for the ultra-rich shows a picture of billionaire Jeff Bezos on May 17, 2021.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
Of those surveyed, 24% said personal wealth should be capped at less than $1 billion, while 20% said it should be capped at anywhere between $1 billion and $10 billion.
According to Forbes annual ranking of the richest people, there are about 200 people in the US who are currently worth more than $10 billion. Among the top 5, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk are all worth more than $100 billion.
Meanwhile, extreme wealth inequality has been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, other reports also show.
The wealthiest Americans have continued to benefit from owning stocks and real estate, particularly over the past year as both the stock market and real estate values have soared. At the end of 2021, the top 1% owned a record 32.3% of the nation’s wealth.
On the other hand, the wealth share of the bottom 90% of Americans has fallen from 30.5% to 30.2% since before the pandemic.
In the Harris poll, 58% of Americans resented the accumulation of wealth during this period, while others suffered the financial consequences of the sudden economic downturn.
Taxing the ultra-rich is gaining support
“Right now, the average billionaire — there’s about 790 of them in America — has an 8% federal tax rate,” Biden said tweeted.
The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax would impose a minimum tax rate of 20% on US households valued more than $100 million. More than half of the revenue could come from companies valued at more than $1 billion.
But despite growing public support for higher taxes on the ultra-rich, the billionaire tax proposals have not caught on.
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