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The new 2020 Ford Explorer SUV is revealed at Ford Field on January 9, 2019. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
Feast Your Eyes on the Trillion-Dollar SUV
The concentration of America's wealth has hit still another terrifying new milestone.
Apr 11, 2021
The Expedition, an SUV that can seat eight passengers, rates as the biggest SUV Ford makes. So how much can an Expedition be worth? That all depends. If the eight passengers sitting in an Expedition happen to be the eight wealthiest Americans, the net worth of that Expedition and everyone in it -- as of yesterday -- would be over $1 trillion. To be more precise: $1.023 trillion dollars, plus the value of the vehicle.
Let me spell that out for you: $1,002,300,000,000. At Wall Street's market close yesterday, according to the billionaire trackers at Forbes, America's eight richest individuals held over $1 trillion for the first time ever.
"We can reverse the trends of the last four decades. We can require the ultra-rich to start paying their fair tax share. Or we can submit to oligarchic rule."
Six of the eight -- Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison -- each now sit on a personal fortune worth $100 billion or more. But don't feel bad for the other two, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both of Google. With wealth of $98.6 billion and $95.6 billion respectively, they're both sitting just a rounding error away from "centi-billionaire" status.
Think about that. A group of white guys so small they could all fit into an SUV now controls a trillion dollars of the nation's wealth. Need some perspective? One trillion dollars equals the collective wealth of a million millionaires. We have states in this nation where the entire population holds significantly less than $1 trillion in wealth.
Eight white guys, $1 trillion. Just seven years ago I was ringing the alarm that just 51 billionaires held personal fortunes worth a combined $1 trillion. But make no mistake. Wealth concentration in America was indeed running out of control seven years ago. That our distribution of wealth back in 2014 now looks mild compared to the present level should absolutely terrify us.
Our current obscene concentration of wealth should also be all the proof we need that our tax system has totally broken down. For decades now, we've taxed work more and more and wealth less and less. We're reaping today what we've been sowing.
Eight white guys controlling a trillion dollars won't work, especially with tens of millions of us reeling from a pandemic. But we can reverse the trends of the last four decades. We can require the ultra-rich to start paying their fair tax share. Or we can submit to oligarchic rule.
And if we do submit, I'll be rewriting this column a few years from now -- with a Ferrari two-seater in the lead.
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Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Bob Lord
Bob Lord is Senior Advisor, Tax Policy at Patriotic Millionaires and an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow.
The Expedition, an SUV that can seat eight passengers, rates as the biggest SUV Ford makes. So how much can an Expedition be worth? That all depends. If the eight passengers sitting in an Expedition happen to be the eight wealthiest Americans, the net worth of that Expedition and everyone in it -- as of yesterday -- would be over $1 trillion. To be more precise: $1.023 trillion dollars, plus the value of the vehicle.
Let me spell that out for you: $1,002,300,000,000. At Wall Street's market close yesterday, according to the billionaire trackers at Forbes, America's eight richest individuals held over $1 trillion for the first time ever.
"We can reverse the trends of the last four decades. We can require the ultra-rich to start paying their fair tax share. Or we can submit to oligarchic rule."
Six of the eight -- Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison -- each now sit on a personal fortune worth $100 billion or more. But don't feel bad for the other two, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both of Google. With wealth of $98.6 billion and $95.6 billion respectively, they're both sitting just a rounding error away from "centi-billionaire" status.
Think about that. A group of white guys so small they could all fit into an SUV now controls a trillion dollars of the nation's wealth. Need some perspective? One trillion dollars equals the collective wealth of a million millionaires. We have states in this nation where the entire population holds significantly less than $1 trillion in wealth.
Eight white guys, $1 trillion. Just seven years ago I was ringing the alarm that just 51 billionaires held personal fortunes worth a combined $1 trillion. But make no mistake. Wealth concentration in America was indeed running out of control seven years ago. That our distribution of wealth back in 2014 now looks mild compared to the present level should absolutely terrify us.
Our current obscene concentration of wealth should also be all the proof we need that our tax system has totally broken down. For decades now, we've taxed work more and more and wealth less and less. We're reaping today what we've been sowing.
Eight white guys controlling a trillion dollars won't work, especially with tens of millions of us reeling from a pandemic. But we can reverse the trends of the last four decades. We can require the ultra-rich to start paying their fair tax share. Or we can submit to oligarchic rule.
And if we do submit, I'll be rewriting this column a few years from now -- with a Ferrari two-seater in the lead.
Bob Lord
Bob Lord is Senior Advisor, Tax Policy at Patriotic Millionaires and an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow.
The Expedition, an SUV that can seat eight passengers, rates as the biggest SUV Ford makes. So how much can an Expedition be worth? That all depends. If the eight passengers sitting in an Expedition happen to be the eight wealthiest Americans, the net worth of that Expedition and everyone in it -- as of yesterday -- would be over $1 trillion. To be more precise: $1.023 trillion dollars, plus the value of the vehicle.
Let me spell that out for you: $1,002,300,000,000. At Wall Street's market close yesterday, according to the billionaire trackers at Forbes, America's eight richest individuals held over $1 trillion for the first time ever.
"We can reverse the trends of the last four decades. We can require the ultra-rich to start paying their fair tax share. Or we can submit to oligarchic rule."
Six of the eight -- Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison -- each now sit on a personal fortune worth $100 billion or more. But don't feel bad for the other two, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both of Google. With wealth of $98.6 billion and $95.6 billion respectively, they're both sitting just a rounding error away from "centi-billionaire" status.
Think about that. A group of white guys so small they could all fit into an SUV now controls a trillion dollars of the nation's wealth. Need some perspective? One trillion dollars equals the collective wealth of a million millionaires. We have states in this nation where the entire population holds significantly less than $1 trillion in wealth.
Eight white guys, $1 trillion. Just seven years ago I was ringing the alarm that just 51 billionaires held personal fortunes worth a combined $1 trillion. But make no mistake. Wealth concentration in America was indeed running out of control seven years ago. That our distribution of wealth back in 2014 now looks mild compared to the present level should absolutely terrify us.
Our current obscene concentration of wealth should also be all the proof we need that our tax system has totally broken down. For decades now, we've taxed work more and more and wealth less and less. We're reaping today what we've been sowing.
Eight white guys controlling a trillion dollars won't work, especially with tens of millions of us reeling from a pandemic. But we can reverse the trends of the last four decades. We can require the ultra-rich to start paying their fair tax share. Or we can submit to oligarchic rule.
And if we do submit, I'll be rewriting this column a few years from now -- with a Ferrari two-seater in the lead.
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