Letters from an American - Heather Cox Richardson

[Joinfortmill]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-14-2022?s=r

This is what stood out to me in this morning's newsletter:

Democracies are at risk from authoritarianism today in large part because centralizing power in a few wealthy people permits those people to continue to pocket disproportionate shares of the national wealth..

According to Forbes, the wealth of the richest 25 Americans rose more than $400 billion from 2014 to 2018, giving them a combined wealth of $1.1 trillion.. It would take the wealth of 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners to get to that number. During those years, those 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes, a true tax rate of 3.4%....It is also behind the outcry today over the proposal of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, allegedly the richest man in the world, to buy Twitter for a cash offer of $43 billion in a hostile takeover of the popular platform. (According to ProPublica, Musk paid no income tax in 2018.)"