The Atlantic

Cancel Billionaires

Wealth inequality hurts society.
Source: Ian Langsdon / Reuters

Nineteen new names were added last week to the Forbes 400, a ranking of America’s richest of the rich, a list including entrepreneurs, executives, financiers, and inheritors. The two richest people, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, are now each worth more than $100 billion.

This is the exaggerated edge of an exaggerated trend. Even with today’s promising , the gap between the rich and the poor is now the biggest it has been in , and the 400 richest Americans have tripled their share of overall wealth in the . Given those dynamics, some Democrats argue that the United States should start taxing wealth, among them Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic8 min read
How Congress Could Protect Free Speech on Campus
Last year at Harvard, three Israeli Jews took a course at the Kennedy School of Government. They say that because of their ethnicity, ancestry, and national origin, their professor subjected them to unequal treatment, trying to suppress their speech
The Atlantic6 min read
What Left-Wing Democrats Haven’t Learned From Defeat
If those on the left wing of the Democratic Party hope to exercise power and bend the national party to their will, they might try to stifle any self-righteousness and learn different lessons from Representative Jamaal Bowman’s defeat. In a primary e
The Atlantic6 min read
A Self-Aware Teen Soap
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition,

Related Books & Audiobooks