We Visualized Billionaire Wealth Gains During the Pandemic

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The richest 0.00019 percent of the US population grew their collective wealth by an estimated $685 billion so far during the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump thinks he is delivering the average American a winning hand right now—despite a cratering economy, mass unemployment, and no clear plan to fight the cause of all this calamity, the coronavirus. At a Monday afternoon press conference at the White House, Trump went so far as to say that “carpenters and policemen and farmers”—millions of ordinary Americans—”are the ones that benefit by having a good stock market, probably more than anybody else.”

Probably more than anyone else? That’s absurd on its face (only 55 percent of Americans report owning stocks, a number that correlates with higher household income, among other things.) But it’s even more disconnected from reality when you collect the receipts: This pandemic period has been a bonanza for billionaires, for whom Trump’s brutalist coronavirus denial and inaction has reaped untold rewards, as our new video infographic above shows.

This cadre of 643 Forbes-certified billionaires grew their collective wealth by an estimated $685 billion, from mid-March through early-August of this year. That’s according to a fresh analysis of Forbes Real Time Billionaires Data by Americans for Tax Fairness and Institute for Policy Studies. To be clear, that’s just the increase in wealth. In total, the the richest 0.000019 percent of the US population—which includes household names like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates—hold $3.6 trillion in combined wealth, as of August 5, 2020.

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