Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos has the resources to launch himself into space. Elon Musk does, too.
In many ways, though, the world’s richest people left the rest of us behind long ago.
The world’s wealthiest 500 individuals are now worth $8.4 trillion, up more than 40% in the year and a half since the global pandemic began its devastation. Meanwhile, the economy’s biggest winners, the tech corporations that created many of these vast fortunes, pay lower tax rates than grocery clerks, and their mega-wealthy founders can exploit legal loopholes to pass huge windfalls onto heirs largely tax-free.