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Consider This from NPR

Pandemic 'Profiteers': Why Billionaires Are Getting Richer During An Economic Crisis

Consider This from NPR

NPR

News, Daily News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2020

⏱️ ? minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"Excess" profits during wartime have been subject to tax at several points in American history. Writer Anand Giridharadas argues we are at similar point today as billionaire wealth has continued to grow in spite of the pandemic. He is the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies notes U.S. billionaires rebounded quickly from the economic collapse earlier this year.

Alan Murray, CEO of Fortune Media, argues that business leaders today are more conscious of social injustice and inequality than the billionaires of the past.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

What if one day Jeff Bezos woke up in his $23 million

0:05.5

Washington DC home? The 34,000 square foot mansion

0:09.8

includes 11 enormous bedrooms for his $80 million New York

0:14.7

penthouse. All combined yet four floors, totally more than 17,000

0:18.7

square feet. Please, Mr. Bezos invite us over. Yeah, because

0:21.7

in his $165 million L.A. mansion, the purchase is reportedly

0:26.6

the highest paid for resident to real estate in the L.A. area.

0:30.7

Susanne wherever he woke up say he decided that morning he was

0:34.5

feeling generous. So Jeff Bezos founder and CEO of Amazon has

0:39.3

876,000 employees around the world. writer and non gared at us

0:45.2

told us about this hypothetical and we should note Amazon is

0:48.5

among the sponsors of NPR. And if Jeff Bezos were to wake up

0:55.4

feeling incredibly generous for everything they have done to

1:00.0

help him become the world's richest person. And he could give

1:04.4

each of them $105,000 bonus. Now that's if he'd calculate using

1:10.7

Bezos net worth as of August this year. Gareded us who wrote the

1:15.5

book winners take all the elite charade of changing the world

1:18.9

says you might be thinking sure, okay, a nice thought. But no one in

1:23.9

position like Jeff Bezos would simply give away all that money.

1:27.9

And your listeners should be reassured that if he were to do

1:31.0

that, he would have exactly as much money as he had at the

1:34.2

beginning of this year before the pandemic. Jeff Bezos along

...

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