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Tag: billionaires

  • Tech Billionaires Get in Line to Support Trump Inauguration Fund

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    Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends a session of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos on January 18, 2024. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

    “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman became the latest tech titan to make an explicit overture to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump when he confirmed Friday that he intends to make a $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

    The news comes after Meta confirmed Wednesday that it has donated $1 million to the fund, and it was reported Thursday that Amazon intends to make a $1 million donation. The Washington Post characterized Altman’s move as “the latest attempt to gain favor from a leading technology executive in an industry that has long been a target of Trump’s vitriol.”

    Altman said in a statement that was sent to multiple outlets that “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”

    The donation from Meta follows a trip by Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg down to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club to meet with the president-elect last month. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, is slated to head to Florida to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago next week, according to The Wall Street Journal.

    Zuckerberg and Trump have not always been on the best of terms—Meta temporarily booted Trump from Instagram and Facebook following his comments regarding the January 6 insurrection, and Trump threatened Zuckerberg with lifetime incarceration if Trump perceived that Zuckerberg was interfering in the 2024 election—but Zuckerberg made entreaties to the then-candidate this past summer when he described Trump’s response to his assassination attempt as “badass.”

    Zuckerberg and Meta refrained from donating to Trump’s inauguration fund in 2017, and to President Joe Biden’s inauguration fund in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal.

    In response to the news that Meta donated to Trump’s inauguration fund this time, the watchdog group Public Citizen wrote: “Shocker! Another tech bro billionaire trying to buy his way into Trump’s good graces. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. $1 million to the man who threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison. Grow a spine.”

    Journalists Mehdi Hasan described the move as “bending both knees to Trump.”

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    Bezos also chafed against Trump during his first presidency. Trump has repeatedly criticized The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, for its coverage of him. In legal proceedings, Amazon also accused Trump of swaying the bidding process when the Pentagon chose Microsoft over Amazon for a lucrative contract because of Trump’s disdain for Bezos. However, in a move that was viewed as a signal to Trump, Bezos blocked the Post from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris just before last month’s election.

    Margaret O’Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington who focuses on the high-tech economy, said during an interview with NPR the fact that support for Trump isn’t happening quietly “is something new.”

    “It’s just a recognition that there’s not much to be gained in outspoken opposition, but perhaps there is something to be gained by being very clear about your support and hope that Trump does well,” she said.

    Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Wealth of World’s Richest Has Doubled Over Past Decade

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    Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Amazion founder Jeff Bezos participates in a discussion during a Milestone Celebration dinner September 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    The total wealth of billionaires increased by 121% from 2015-24.

    Driven largely by the accumulation of massive wealth by the richest people in the United States, the Swiss wealth manager UBS said Thursday the assets of billionaires around the world more than doubled over the past decade.

    Between 2015-24, the total wealth of billionaires increased by 121%, from $6.3 trillion to $14 trillion.

    Meanwhile, the MSCI AC World Index of global equities, which measures the performance of more than 3,000 stocks from both developed and emerging markets, rose by 73%.

    The planet’s total gross domestic product is about $105.4 trillion, with a population of just over 8 billion, underscoring the extreme concentration of wealth among the very richest people.

    The number of billionaires rose from 1,757 to 2,682 over the past decade, while the wealthiest people in the world boasted significant gains over just the past year.

    Billionaires’ wealth jumped by about 17% in 2024, with the accumulation of wealth among the richest people in the U.S. offsetting a decline in China.

    U.S. billionaires amassed wealth gains that were 27.6% higher than the previous year, accumulating a total of $5.8 trillion—more than 40% of international billionaire wealth.

    The tax cuts pushed through by President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2017 are still in effect in the U.S. Tax policy analysts have found that the law was skewed to the rich, with households in the top 1% of incomes expecting to receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025 compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for people in the bottom 60%.

    As Common Dreams reported this week, the top 12 U.S. billionaires now control $2 trillion. The wealth of the four richest people in the U.S.—Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—has hit $1 trillion.

    “These four men were worth $74 billion 12 short years ago,” said Americans for Tax Fairness. “Tax billionaires.”

    At the G20 Summit last month, world leaders agreed to “engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed.”

    Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
    Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.

  • ‘Unsettling New Milestone’: Top 12 US Billionaires Now Control $2 Trillion in Wealth

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    Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Jensen Huang of Nvidia speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center on September 27, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    “The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities,” according to the author of a new analysis.

    Just 12 U.S. billionaires now have a collective net worth of over $2 trillion—a figure that amounts to a little less than a third of total federal spending in 2023—according to an analysis out Tuesday from Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

    The $2 trillion number is also twice the amount of wealth that the top 12 US billionaires held in 2020, according to researchers at IPS, a progressive organization.

    The full list of 12 billionaires includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang.

    “This is an unsettling new milestone for wealth concentration in the United States. The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities,” wrote the author of the analysis, Omar Ocampo, a researcher at IPS.

    New to the “oligarchic dozen” is Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of the tech company Nvidia. Nvidia, which became the most valuable publicly traded company this year, has seen its profits jump thanks to the world’s ravenous appetite for the artificial intelligence chips that the firm produces. According to the analysis, Huang’s personal wealth “has skyrocketed from $4.7 billion in 2020 to $122.4 billion—a mind-boggling 2,504 percent increase—over the last four years.”

    Each of the billionaires on the list “owns or is a controlling shareholder of a business that is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence,” according to Ocampo, which raises concerns about their respective carbon footprints.

    Fueling AI is energy intensive, and AI data centers in the U.S. are largely powered by fossil fuels, meaning their proliferation poses a threat to the environment and a transition to a green economy.

    Ocampo also discusses the political reach of the billionaires on the list. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who respectively own X and The Washington Post, “have both purchased large media platforms, which has granted them the ability to set the terms of public debate with the hopes of influencing public opinion in their favor.”

    Musk specifically has established himself as a major power broker within the GOP. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions helping to re-elect Donald Trump and is now poised to play a major role in the president-elect’s administration, helping oversee a new advisory committee tasked with slashing government spending.

    As of early December, Trump had tapped an “unprecedented” total of seven reported billionaires for key positions in his administration, according to a separate piece of analysis by Inequality.org.

    “We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown,” Ocampo wrote on Tuesday.

    Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Trump Offers Key Pentagon Job to Billionaire Whose Firm Trained Khashoggi’s Murderers

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

    Stephen Feinberg is pictured at the U.S. Capitol on December 11, 2008. (Photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/The The Washington Post via Getty Images)

    Stephen Feinberg is co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a company that provided training to members of the hit squad that murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

    President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly offered the number-two Pentagon job to a secretive billionaire investor with close ties to the military-industrial complex, potentially introducing additional conflicts of interest to an incoming administration that is set to be rife with corporate executives and lobbyists.

    Stephen Feinberg is co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity behemoth Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a firm that provided paramilitary training to members of the elite team that murdered Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

    Trump drew global outrage for publicly defending the Saudi regime in the wake of the assassination, even after U.S. intelligence agencies established that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorized Khashoggi’s murder.

    The New York Times reported in 2021 that four Saudis who took part in the 2018 Khashoggi assassination “received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department.” Tier 1 Group, an Arkansas-based company financed by Cerberus, provided the training.

    “The instruction occurred as the secret unit responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s killing was beginning an extensive campaign of kidnapping, detention, and torture of Saudi citizens ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, to crush dissent inside the kingdom,” the Times noted.

    “Having this revolving door of people who sit on boards of major defense contractors and then cycle in and out of the Pentagon is a problem that did not begin with Trump, but is a problem nonetheless.”

    It’s not yet clear whether Feinberg intends to accept Trump’s offer to serve as deputy defense secretary, but news of the choice prompted speculation that Feinberg could be elevated to the top Pentagon spot as Fox News host Pete Hegseth—the president-elect’s nominee for the role—faces skepticism from senators amid new details of the sexual assault allegations against him. (Update: The Times reported Wednesday morning that Trump’s support for Hegseth is “wobbling” and he is “openly discussing other people for the job, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.”)

    Citing an unnamed person familiar with his thinking, Politicoreported that Feinberg is expected to accept the job offer for deputy defense secretary. Feinberg would also have to be confirmed by the Senate.

    The Washington Post, which first reported Trump’s offer on Tuesday, noted that the private equity billionaire is a major donor to the president-elect and has “investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts.” The Post observed that Cerberus “has invested in hypersonic missiles” and “previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp.”

    Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), told the Post that “having this revolving door of people who sit on boards of major defense contractors and then cycle in and out of the Pentagon is a problem that did not begin with Trump, but is a problem nonetheless.”

    “Is he going to be listening to a whole range of constituencies or primarily business constituencies?” Duss asked of Feinberg.

    If he accepts the president-elect’s offer, Feinberg would join a number of conflict-of-interest-ridden nominees for high-level positions in the incoming Trump administration.

    Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, characterized Trump’s Cabinet picks so far as “chaotic evil” and warned that their conflicts of interest could bring horrible consequences for the American public.

    “Corruption is not only bad in and of itself,” Hauser told the Institute for Public Accuracy on Tuesday. “It’s also a bad thing that makes other terrible things more likely to happen. If you corrupt the enforcement of environmental protection laws, people will be poisoned by the water they drink and air they breathe. If you corrupt the Department of Labor, workplace safety will collapse over time and wage protections will disappear.”

    “That’s what happened under the last Trump administration. This is going to be worse,” Hauser warned. “Food safety issues, automobile safety with driverless cars, rail safety—these are all risks that the Trump team will be taking with the lives of ordinary people.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

  • ‘By and For the Ultra-Wealthy’: Here Are the Billionaires Set to Run Trump’s Administration

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Linda McMahon and Elon Musk attend the America First Policy Institute gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida.  (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    “Trump paid plenty of lip service to working-class Americans, but as president-elect, he’s moved quickly to stack his administration with billionaires that share his vision of a rigged economy that only works for people like them.”

    Since winning the presidential election earlier this month, Donald Trump has wasted no time working to fill his incoming administration with billionaires and other ultra-rich individuals who are poised to benefit from the GOP agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and large-scale deregulation.

    In separate analyses published this week, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and Accountable.US offered overviews of the president-elect’s key nominations and their potential conflicts of interest as Trump prepares to retake power in January.

    So far, Trump has announced plans to nominate billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to head the Treasury Department, WWE billionaire Linda McMahon to head the Education Department, billionaire crypto banker Howard Lutnick to head the Commerce Department, and billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency—an outside advisory commission tasked with slashing federal spending and regulations.

    “These appointments clearly show the incoming administration will be run by and for the ultra-wealthy,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “They’ve already announced plans to spend trillions of dollars to renew the Trump tax bill, to further enrich large corporations and wealthy elites like themselves while advocating for cuts to vital programs that working and middle-class Americans depend on.”

    ATF’s analysis, released Monday, shows that the combined wealth of Trump’s richest nominees and transition team members—including the president-elect and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the vice president-elect—is over $313 billion. By comparison, the combined net worth of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet is an estimated $118 million.

    “Even excluding Elon Musk—the world’s richest man and Trump’s co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency—the average net worth of Trump, his vice president, and top appointees is $616 million,” ATF observed. “This figure is over 616 times higher than the mean average wealth of the typical American household, which is a little more than $1 million.”

    ATF and Accountable.US also highlighted other ultra-rich individuals nominated for key roles in the incoming administration, including drilling enthusiast Doug Burgum, worth an estimated $100 million; Mehmet Oz, worth up to $315 million; and Chris Wright, who as of earlier this month held nearly $47 million worth of stock in his fracking company, Liberty Energy.

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    Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement Tuesday that “Donald Trump paid plenty of lip service to working-class Americans” during the 2024 campaign, “but as president-elect, he’s moved quickly to stack his administration with billionaires that share his vision of a rigged economy that only works for people like them.”

    “Should the Senate rubber stamp these nominations,” Carrk added, “Trump’s department heads will be among the biggest beneficiaries of another promised tax giveaway for big corporations and the top 1%, paid for with deep cuts for seniors, veterans, and everyday workers.”

    Billionaires have already gotten significantly richer since Trump’s election victory, according to research published last week by ATF. In roughly the week after Trump’s win, the combined net worth of the nation’s 815 billionaires jumped by around $280 billion—with Musk’s wealth surge accounting for 20% of that gain.

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).