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US Billionaire Wealth Surges to $8.1 Trillion as Affordability Crisis Hammers Working Class
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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That's about $23,000 per person in the US (estimating 350m population). That's life changing money for most.
If you push that to the bottom 70-80% and not the top % brackets who probably aren’t in as bad a spot it probably does even better.
Well, except purchasing power would decrease significantly if wealth was distributed that way.
I know it's counter-intuitive but the real problem with billionaires isn't that the poor are destitute. The problem is that economic power is political power, and oligarchies use institutionalized violence to keep the poor destitute forever.
I don’t think so as far as purchasing power in this limited case. This assumes capitalists would adjust pricing to soak up the cash. Giving people ~$30k would be almost guaranteed go to bills and food, maybe some would buy a used car or something. Few would save the money. This hypothetical isn’t an annuity, so hiking prices would likely be local and predatory. Scumbag landlords hiking rent. Debt collector vultures. Shitty used car businesses hiking prices. All the usual scumbags preying on the poor. I don’t want to get into the weeds too deeply, but the buying power issue would absolutely be a problem were we to implement something like UBI because businesses like apartments would absolutely jack up the prices and wreck the buying power of the lower income brackets.
Except that every time we print money for some bailout or crooked public works project that never materializes we further devalue the currency and all that money goes to the rich. Simply by being so insanely rich they're already causing a decrease in everyone elses wealth.