Among individual people, Amaton founder Jeff Bezos’s assets surpassed the once unimaginable $ 200 billion, and businessman, inventor and famous provocateur Elon Musk joined those whose assets exceeded $ 100 billion due to the continued growth of Tesla’s stock.
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Musk has thus expanded the club of people with assets of over 100 billion USD, which now has four members thanks to him. In addition to Musk and Bezos, it also includes Facebook owner and boss Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. According to Bloomberg’s calculations, the value of their assets is USD 540 billion.
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This week has again brought significant benefits for the wealth of the richest, helped mainly by the rapid growth of stock markets, especially technology stocks. US stocks rose to new highs on Friday as investors have confidence in the new approach to inflation introduced by the US Federal Reserve (Fed).
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Muska’s assets have risen by $ 76.1 billion since the beginning of this year. However, this is only the second highest amount. Bezos became the most rich this year, with the value of his assets rising by $ 84.9 billion. Since the end of 2017, when his assets exceeded $ 100 billion, the value of his assets has doubled, even after he transferred a quarter of his stake in Amazon to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, in a divorce last year.
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The rapid growth of the wealth of the richest people is in sharp contrast to the state of the world economy. Economic growth has fallen sharply as a pandemic has forced companies to lay off millions of employees and consumer demand has fallen sharply. The economic problems hit young people and workers with lower wages the most.
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“There is no doubt that a pandemic will exacerbate income and wealth inequality, both in the short and long term,” said Miles Corak, a professor of income inequality at New York City University (CUNY).
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Since the beginning of this year, the assets of the world’s 500 richest people have risen by $ 871 billion, or 15 percent, according to a Bloomberg list.
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