The Billion-Dollar Question.

• Author: Riczo, Steve
• Position: American Thought - Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders questions the existence of billionaires

"... Bernie Sanders, one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination for president, insists billionaires should not exist. Is he right?"

ONE of the most-pressing issues in the U.S. is the income and wealth inequality shaping a nation of haves and have-nots, as a small percentage of citizens control a disproportionate share of the nation's wealth. There are 40,000,000 Americans living below the poverty line while the middle class' wages have been stagnant for more than 40 years. Contrast that with the country's billionaires, who often live extraordinarily opulent lifestyles characterized by multiple homes around the world, yachts, expensive cars, and travel to exotic destinations.

While the U.S. dominates the billionaires club, this phenomenon also is playing out on the world stage. A study by Oxfam revealed that the world's 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4,600,000,000 people, or 60% of the global population. One of the few areas in the last presidential election that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agreed on was that the U.S. economy is rigged for the wealthy. Most Americans seem to agree, as a Pew Research poll found that 70% of Americans, including 50% of Republicans, believe the U.S. economic system unfairly favors the most-powerful interests. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination for president, insists billionaires should not exist. Is he right?

Numerous studies demonstrate that income and wealth gains are accruing largely to the top few percent of the wealthy with rapidly growing disparity. As Sanders proclaimed in an October 2019 Democratic debate: "When you have a half a million Americans sleeping out on the street today, when you have 87,000,000 people uninsured or underinsured, when you have hundreds of thousands of kids who cannot afford to go to college and millions struggling with the oppressive burden of student debt, and then you have three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of the American society, that is immoral and an economic outrage.. . . We cannot afford a billionaire class whose greed and corruption has been at war with the working families of this country for 45 years."

The "war" to which Sanders alludes is the "rigged economy" consisting of structural inequities often designed for and by the wealthy that keep many Americans from getting ahead. "The U.S. economic system is indeed biased in favor of the most-powerful interests in various...