Joe Biden’s election has done little to slow the inexorable surge of wealth among U.S. billionaires.
In the president’s first 100 days in office, against a drumbeat of calls for the rich to pay more in taxes, the 100 wealthiest Americans added a combined $195 billion to their fortunes, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
The most recent gains have been fueled by the continued rise of the stock market since Biden was sworn in Jan. 20, along with the vaccination program’s fast rollout and a $1.9 trillion government stimulus package. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes have both climbed more than 10% during that time.
Attempts such as Biden’s to refloat the economy can boost incomes and wealth at the very top, said Mike Savage, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics.
“We’ve seen that paradox since the 2008 financial crash with quantitative easing, which has mostly benefited people with assets, inflating their value significantly,’’ Savage said.
The richest 100 made a further $267 billion between the 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration, amounting to a total gain of $461 billion since Nov. 4. From Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration to last fall’s election, those billionaires got about $860 billion richer.
The combined fortunes of the richest 100 Americans have reached $2.9 trillion, greater than the combined $2.5 trillion wealth of the bottom 50% of the U.S. population, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
The rise has been driven by an explosion of wealth among a handful of ultra-billionaires. The 10 wealthiest Americans have added $255 billion since election day, bringing their combined net worth to $1.2 trillion.
The biggest driver of this wealth surge has been tech companies like Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, bolstered by increased online and stay-at-home activity during the coronavirus pandemic. The FANG stocks index has climbed 94% in the past 12 months compared with the 45% advance of the S&P 500.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, has gotten $11.7 billion richer this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, adding to about $120 billion of wealth gains during the Trump presidency. Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth rose $8.1 billion yesterday alone on the strength of Facebook’s first-quarter results.
Google’s Larry Page has added $26.6 billion this year after the California-based company posted record profit last year, while the wealth of Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk has grown $5.1 billion since January.
Finance billionaires such as Warren Buffett and Blackstone Group Inc.’s Stephen Schwarzman have also been major beneficiaries of stock market rises.
In his first 100 days, Biden has moved quickly to propose sharp tax hikes for the rich and programs to funnel trillions of dollars to middle- and lower-class Americans in the form of new infrastructure, social spending and stimulus checks. He laid out those policies in his first address to Congress on Wednesday.