Billionaires, such as Bill Gates, have gifted generous amounts of money throughout the course of their lives. Bill Gates’ total donations equal around a third of his net worth of about $90 billion. What if the other 2,207 billionaires around the world followed suit? Could we lessen or solve some of our biggest burdens?
Self Lender wanted to know. Because of the United States’ struggle with low minimum wage, credit card debt, homelessness, rising healthcare costs, and student loan debt, Self Lender crunched the numbers to discover if billionaires have the resources available to diminish these economic issues. Exactly how many donations of what amount would it take?
There are about 2,208 billionaires globally with an average net worth of $4.1 billion each. These numbers are expected to grow as the elite continue to rapidly accrue wealth. Furthermore, the 500 richest billionaires have a combined net worth exceeding $5 trillion. These are the figures that Self Lender used to see if billionaires have the potential to clear up some of our nation’s largest financial dilemmas.
The US federal minimum wage rests at $7.25 per hour. Over 700,000 individuals work full-time on these wages, barely living above the poverty line. If each billionaire donated just over $5,500,000 annually, we could more than double the minimum wage. This may seem like a large amount of money, but from a billionaire’s perspective it is just a small fraction of their wealth. For reference, top billionaires such as Warren Buffet make $37 million per day.
Nearly 43 million Americans have unpaid medical bills, averaging at about $1,700 per person. With the increasing costs of healthcare, millions of Americans go in debt to receive the necessary treatments. If each billionaire made a single payment of around $340,000,000, it would expunge U.S. medical debt.
Check out the infographic below to see more challenges that billionaires could solve by generously donating a portion of their fortunes.
