In case you missed the news, Jeff Bezos isn’t the world’s richest man anymore. According to Barron’s, Bezos was edged out in August by a 72-year old Frenchman named Bernard Arnault, who is the founder, chairman and CEO of Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, a luxury-goods conglomerate covering fashion, jewelry, cosmetics, and wines, and spirits. Arnault’s net worth is $186.3 billion, which is a mere $300 more than Bezos’s combined fortune.
My reason for mentioning this is not to celebrate Bezos’s fall, which for all I know may have been reversed since the Barron’s article appeared. Rather, it is to establish a rough ceiling for the amount of money any one person can reasonably be expected to control at this point in history. Right now the vicinity of $200 billion seems to be the limit. No one, in other words, is even close to being a trillionaire.
It’s a fact that I suspect is apparent to most adults in the country who follow the news. Certainly it’s a fact that one might reasonably expect the leader of the free world to have at his disposal. Not so, however. Here is said leader once again attempting to sell his American Rescue Plan, whose estimated cost is $3.5 billion trillion. The plan, a wish list of far-left goodies including universal pre-school, free community college, and more, is supposed to be funded through wealth redistribution. But it’s not just any rich American who Biden intends to bleed dry. According to these remarks, which the president made at the White House yesterday, it’s the “trillionaires [sic] and billionaires” who will finance the bill.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Joe Biden has claimed — falsely — that he is the first president who wasn’t educated at an Ivy League school. The point of the boast is to reflect that he is “everyman,” though the news that he owes $500,000 in back taxes suggests otherwise. But he’s wrong again. Plenty of working class people attend Ivy League colleges. All Biden’s lack of degree from a prestigious university reveals is that was not bright enough to get in — a fact that he reaffirms daily.
(h/t Weasel Zippers)
