America’s 14 Richest People Made More Money Than Needed to Fund Food Stamps for 50 Million People

Fourteen of the 1 percenters made more from their investments than the $80 billion allotted for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed 50 million Americans. And that food assistance budget had been slashed by $8.7 billion due to a lack of federal funding, a cut that hit Americans in need hard but represented a mere tenth of the profits the über rich made on top of other forms of revenue. It gets worse.

In 2013, according to Truthout, America’s wealthiest individuals made “more than the entire budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), and Medicaid ($304 billion)” solely from their investments. With numbers like these, the wealth gap we hear politicians droning about fixing should be renamed the wealth abyss.

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Truthout:

In a testament to the inability — or unwillingness — of Congress to do anything about the incessant upward re-distribution of America’s wealth, the richest 14 Americans increased their wealth from $507 billion to $589 billion in ONE YEAR from their investment earnings. As stated by Forbes, “All together the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth a staggering $2.29 trillion, up $270 billion from a year ago.”

…The fruits of American productivity go to the richest Americans, who can afford to hold onto their fortunes, defer taxes indefinitely, and then pay a smaller capital gains rate when they eventually decide to cash in. Worse yet, they can stash their winnings overseas, tax-free. It is estimated that $7.6 trillion of personal wealth is hidden in tax havens. That means, stunningly, that $1 of every $12 of worldwide wealth is hidden in a haven.

America has no wealth tax, no financial speculation tax, no means of stopping the rampant redistribution of money to the rich. As Noam Chomsky said, The concept of the Common Good that is being relentlessly driven into our heads demands that we focus on our own private gain, and suppress normal human emotions of solidarity, mutual support and concern for others.

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—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata