"The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically widened the economic gap between average people and the wealthy elite, with billionaires raking in trillions of dollars in mere months. Without the competition from small businesses, large multinational companies have been allowed to gobble up business, expanding both their wealth and their influence, while extreme poverty has risen for the first time in two decades."

Interesting quote from an article I read. I remember a few months back the WHO backtracking their stand on lockdowns saying they had caused extreme poverty for the first time in a couple of decades in many cities, states and countries around the world. While they didn't mean it in the same way as in the above quote (they were concerned about the medical effects such as malnutrition in children) the message is still the same. The divide between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' has widened exponentially. 

I know we (and millions of others) had to rely on our Amazon membership a lot more for many months because we couldn't find what we needed here, even when stores opened back up. Some manufacturers were shut down so stuff wasn't being made and warehouses were shut so product wasn't being moved. Or, in the case of people buying up and hoarding Clorox wipes, bleach, TP and paper towels, demand far exceeded supply. It's just in the last few months companies have somewhat caught up and already those items are again disappearing, at least where I live they are. 

Of course this made Amazon a buttload of money because people didn't have a choice whether it be due to lack of goods or lack of services. And now Jeff Bezos is projected to become the worlds first trillionare. In fact, billionares saw their net worth rise by half a trillion dollars during the pandemic, while 40 million Americans filed for unemployment. And those are the ones who qualified. 'Under the table' employees, contractors, etc., weren't so lucky. 

Link to a recent Business Insider article here says this: (we can thank Obama for this, though I know he's not the first POTUS to do this.....)

This isn't the first time billionaires have seen gains while a large portion of Americans were feeling losses. When the housing bubble burst in 2007, home prices fell 21% and roughly 3.1 million homes were foreclosed on in the United States. The stock market plummeted by over 50%. And by the end of 2009, 8.8 million Americans had lost their jobs. And the effects lingered. From 2009 to 2012, the incomes of the bottom 99% grew by only 0.4%, but the income of the top 1% grew by a staggering 31.4% in the same time span. And it all ties back to two things.


First, the government disproportionately gave more aid to banks and corporations. In 2008, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was signed into law, creating a $700 billion program to purchase devalued assets from banks. This was called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Later, President Obama would direct $75 billion in funds from TARP to help reduce interest payments for homeowners. That means homeowners received around 10% of the direct relief that banks and corporations did.

And this leads to reason No. 2. When the stock market bounced back, the unequal bailouts meant that the wealthy still had money on hand to invest and thus profit, while the middle and lower classes did not. In 2008, the Federal Reserve lowered short-term interest rates to near zero. They would remain that low for nearly a decade. This paved the way for a historic bull market on Wall Street that began in 2009 and lasted until March 2020, when the pandemic hit.

In that time, the S&P 500 gained 462%. That means that a $1,000 investment in the S&P 500 at the low point of the financial crisis could have returned roughly $4,620, while someone who could afford a $1 million investment could have pulled in over $4.6 million.

The Small Business Administration made $349 billion available to small businesses with the Paycheck Protection Program. But like in 2008, $243 million of that was snapped up by large, publicly traded corporations, some of which were valued at over $100 million (emphasis my own). Even hedge funds submitted claims to try to tap into what they saw as free money.

On March 16, 2020, just five days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the Dow suffered the worst single-day points drop in its history. But by June 4, seven of the world's richest people had seen their fortunes increase by over 50%. Part of what made this possible was a stock-market rebound fueled both by the Paycheck Protection Program and actions by the Fed. Again, the Fed lowered short-term interest rates for banks to near 0%, and as before, they have promised to hold those rates low until the economy is on track..... Read the article. It's pretty interesting.

Fortunately we were not impacted by job loss because my husband is an essential employee, but many people I know, and small businesses I used to frequent, have suffered greatly. Some of the businesses will not come back from this. Some only survived by the skin of their teeth because they defied the lockdown order before they reached their point of no return and reopened. To say this virus has fundamentally impacted this country, and the world, on an individual financial level is an understatement. It's definitely made the rich richer and the rest of us are left holding the bag with no increase in income (those who still have a job) yet the price of goods is going up. Beef rose by $2/lb since March where I live. Though we may not have been impacted the same way as others, we are literally paying for it now and I don't see it getting any better.  

My goal has never been to help a guy become a trillionare, but we had no choice thanks to the government, and that should make everyone pay attention. The government can give and they can take away. More often than not the elite few gets the better end of that deal. 

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