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A billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e. a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually major currencies such as the United States dollar, the euro or the pound sterling.
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- As school buildings in poor communities crumble for lack of investment, America’s billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than the poorest half of households.
- William Barber II, The Real Epidemic is Poverty (March 30, 2020), The Progressive
- Beasley pointed toward Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two richest people in the world, who could each individually help those in these situations with a small chunk of their overall change. Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has a net worth of $151 billion, according to Forbes, with his wealth increasing by more than 500% from January 2020 to March this year. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Bezos has a net worth of $177 billion. And their net worth is still growing. The week of October 11, Musk's net wealth increased by $12.7 billion due to Tesla stock gains, according to Forbes, and in just one day, on October 15, Bezos' generated $5.6 billion from Amazon stock. When news broke that Musk may have beat Bezos for the richest person title, he tweeted at Bezos a silver second place medal emoji. Meanwhile, Beasley told CNN that millions of others are in a "heartbreaking" situation as they're "knocking on famine's door."
- The governments are tapped out. This is why and this is when ... the billionaires need to step up now on a one-time basis, $6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not complicated... I'm not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year... We have a one-time crisis: a perfect storm of conflict, climate change and COVID. ...Just help me with them one time... The world's in trouble and you're telling me you can't give me .36% of your net worth increase to help the world in trouble, in times like this?... What if it was your daughter starving to death? What if it was your family starving to death? Wake up, smell the coffee, and help... My god, people are dying out there... We have a vaccine for this. It's called money, food.
- The wealth that we have in this country is extraordinary. Last year, at the height of COVID, a billionaire was created every 17 hours. The average net worth increase by the billionaire community – that’s over 2,000 billionaires worldwide – was $5.2 billion per day... I need an additional $6 billion this year to reach the 41 million ... that are knocking on famine’s door... Let me tell you what will happen if I don’t reach those ... countries with that $6 billion. Yes, you’ll have starvation, mass starvation. You will have destabilization of nations. And you will have mass migration... The price tag to fix it will not be $6 billion... It will be trillions of dollars.
- Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist.
- The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.
- Winnie Byanyima, as quoted in Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year - poorest half of humanity got nothing, Oxfam International (22 January 2018)
- The only physicists I know who are billionaires are failed physicists.
- Lawrence Krauss, (May 14, 2020)"Sheldon Glashow - The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - FULL VIDEO". The Origiss Podcast, YouTube. (quote at 33:25 of 1:30:12 in video)
- The rich individuals are increasingly hoarding everything. If the billionaires want to go to space, they could at least leave their money on Earth to solve the critical Earthbound problems. We now have an estimated 2,775 billionaires with a combined net worth of around $13.1 trillion. I have it on good authority that you don’t need more than $1 billion to live comfortably. Even if every billionaire kept $1 billion, that would leave around $10 trillion for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction. We should be taxing the vast and rapidly growing billionaire wealth to help finance a civilized world.
- Jeffrey Sachs', Speech at the UN Food Systems Pre-summit, Share International magazine, Speech transcript (October 2021)
- What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels. This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans … You know, this country just does not belong to a handful of billionaires.
- Bernie Sanders, Staff (April 29, 2015). "Bernie Sanders confirms presidential run and damns America's inequities". the Guardian. Retrieved on May 2, 2015.
- Billionaires and Wall Street should not be buying elections.
- Bernie Sanders, Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami, transcript by The New York Times (9 March 2016)
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