The three richest people in the United States have collectively more wealth than the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million Americans, highlighting the country’s extreme income disparity, according to a new study.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have a combined fortune of $264 billion, the Institute for Policy Studies said in a report, calling the growing wealth gap a “moral crisis” that “threatens our democracy.”
Bezos is worth $95 billion, Gates is worth $90 billion and Buffett is worth $79 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time estimates on Thursday.
America’s top 25 top billionaires have more than $1 trillion in wealth, equivalent to the wealth of 56 percent of the rest of the US population, or 178 million people, the Washington-based think tank said, using data from the most recent Forbes 400 list.
The 400 richest people in the US have a combined wealth of $2.68 trillion and collectively have more than the…