An analysis released Monday to mark Tax Day in the United States shows that the country's 735 billionaires have seen their collective wealth soar by 62% over the past two years while worker earnings have grown just 10%, modest gains eaten away by the rising costs of food, housing, and other necessities.
According to new calculations by Oxfam America, U.S. billionaires now own a combined $4.7 trillion in wealth, much of which goes completely untaxed. As "ProPublica" recently found in an examination of data from the Internal Revenue Service—an agency that disproportionately targets the poor — the 25 richest people in the U.S. paid a true tax rate of just 3.4% from 2014 to 2018.
