So @Forbes released their list of the 400 richest Americans today. Let's see if we can wrap our heads around exactly how much money they cumulatively have. THREAD: 1/n https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/ 

From the article: "America's 400 richest are worth a record 3.2 Trillion" - this is a HUGE number, 3,200,000,000,000. That is a LOT of money. 2/n.

The most aggressive approach to ending world hunger requires, according to a 2018 IFPRI estimate, $265B. Let's have our ultra-rich pay for that. 2,935,000,000,00 remains. 3/n.

In 2018, there were approximately 500,000 homeless people in the US. Let's give them all $100,000 dollars, that they could put toward rent, food, education, debt, etc. We'd still have 2.885 Trillion dollars left. 4/n.

Let's redo the Covid stimulus of $1200 a month, for every US adult, every month from March of this year til now (September). This is a big dent, but we still have 1,129,400,000,000 to spend. 5/n.

Malaria would cost about 120 Billion to end. Done. We now have 1 Trillion, 9 Billion, 400 million dollars. 6/n.

Cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? We'd need around 500 Million to do it, but for our mega-rich, that's pocket change. $1,008,900,000,000 to go! 7/n

Let's give each of the US' ~17 million healthcare workers 10,000 as a thank you for their service amidst this pandemic. We'd now have 838.9 Billion dollars left. 8/n

This is slightly morbid, but let's have our billionaires pay for the funerals of those who have died of Covid in the US so far. $12,000 (cost of average funeral) * 190,000 deaths so far = 2.28 Billion. Our wealthy people have 836.62 Billion left. 9/n

Continuing on healthcare: The US spent around $329 billion on prescription drugs in 2016. Let's round that up to $400 billion because of inflation, and pay for everyone's prescriptions for 2020. We'd have *only* 436.62 Billion left. 10/n.

I might keep going later with this, but we've already ended world hunger, significantly helped the homeless crisis, given money to people during covid, ended malaria, cleaned the garbage patch, paid our health workers a bonus, covered funeral costs, and paid for medication. 11/n

And STILL, every single person on this list could be a BILLIONAIRE, more money than any of us will ever even approach. Having helped with so many societal problems. 12/n

Wealth inequality in this country is enormous, because the scale of the numbers defies human understanding. We need to redistribute this wealth, particularly since so much of it comes from such exploitative behaviors. 13/n.

Logging off for the night, but if you want to try to spend the remaining 436.62 Billion we have left over that would be amazing. Tax the rich. 14/14, end of thread.