Bill Gates washes his own dishes, as we learned this year from his Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, but he’s certainly not trying to save money. The world’s richest person is doing everything in his power to decrease his fortune. He stopped working for a living. He sold most of his stake in Microsoft. And he’s poured $28 billion so far into the family foundation, which is fighting AIDS, polio, tuberculosis, and hunger. Despite all that, Gates’s pile keeps getting higher. His wealth as of April 8 totaled $79 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s up $16 billion in just the past two years.
Gates is just the most extreme example of the polarization of wealth in the U.S. The top hundredth of 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers—that’s 16,000 people—have a combined net worth of $6 trillion. That’s as much as the bottom two-thirds of the population. Meanwhile, a quarter of American families say they have no money in a checking or savings account to cover an emergency, according to Bankrate.com.
