How Wealthy Are the Forbes 400 – Let’s Try Some “Arithmetic” …

Posted on the 03 October 2012 by Andy96

Robert Reich made the following statement last June, ” … the richest 400 Americans {own} as much as the bottom 150 million put together.” Let me try to put this in perspective with a little “arithmetic.”

Imagine 400 small towns across America with an average of 28,000 homes each. That’s 11,200,000 homes. If each home is worth an average $150,000, the total real estate value is the same as the total worth of the Forbes 400, $1,680,000,000,000 or $4.2 billion per billionaire.

Now imagine leveling each of those 400 towns and replacing its 28,000 homes with a single large mansion on the land left vacant by those demolished homes. If each home sheltered an average of 2.5 citizens, then 70,000 people are also displaced for each billionaire.

That’s truely excessive and unreasonable redistribution of wealth from the lowest 150,000,000 to the top 400.