Billionaires continue to add dollars to their bank accounts and fortunes, having seen their fortunes grow by more than a billion dollars (824 billion euros) during the pandemic, reveals The Guardian.
Currently the second richest man in the world, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has seen his fortune grow by $ 70 billion (€ 57,7 billion) to a total of $ 185 billion (€ 152,5 billion) euros). However, throughout the pandemic Bezos has been heavily criticized for not improving the conditions of his warehouses, putting the health of thousands of workers at risk, being accused of just thinking about sales.
Bezos's company started paying risk subsidies in June 2020 after fierce criticism. With this grant, Amazon workers saw an increase of $ 0,99 (0,82 euros) per hour during the pandemic season, while Jeff Bezos saw an increase of $ 11,7 million (9,6 million euros) schedules.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who rose to number one on the list of the richest, saw his fortune grow by more than $ 140 billion (€ 115,4 billion) to a total of $ 195 billion (160,7 billion euros).
Ao challenge the rules of confinement, part of the Tesla plant in California had to go into isolation due to several outbreaks. Employee salaries were also reduced by 10% to 30% from April to June 2020, but a positive sign for Musk was the entry into the New York Stock Exchange.
Despite this increase, the Covid-19 pandemic continues to strongly affect world economies, making the International Monetary Fund doubt a recovery period in the near future, reveals Reuters, further affecting household incomes.
In October, the IMF foresaw a contraction of the global Gross Domestic Product in the order of 4,4% for 2020, followed by a recovery of 5,2% this year. According to the chief economist, Gita Gopinath, economic stimuli from the United States and Japan could help spur faster recovery of their economies by the second half of 2021.
