We should all be pissed off: The Wealth of Hank & Doug Meijer increased by $900 Million in the past 4 months

As the COVID pandemic continues and the Delta variant claims more and more lives, the world’s Billionaire Class continue to increase its wealth.

According to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a report that was issue last week:

The world’s 2,690 global billionaires saw their combined wealth rise from $8 trillion on March 18, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021, drawing on data from Forbes.

Global billionaire total wealth has increased more over the past 17 months of the pandemic than it did in the 15 years prior to the pandemic.

The fact that the Billionaire Class has continued to increase their wealth while millions continue to die from the COVID virus and millions more go hungry and face being forced out of their housing, should be enough to enrage anyone who has an once of compassion.

We see them same affects right here in West Michigan, where thousands of families continue to experience food insecurity, are unemployed or don’t make wages to enable them to afford the current cost of rent. 

In addition, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), recently announced that Kent County has now moved to a “substantial risk” status, mostly because of the Delta variant and the increase in numbers of those testing positive for the COVID virus. The CDC and the Kent County Health Department are also now recommending that all people, even those who have already been vaccinated, should wear masks while indoors. 

The correlation between the pandemic and wealth accumulation amongst the Billionaire Class can also be seen in West Michigan. In late March, we reported that the wealth of Hank & Doug Meijer had increased from $10.2 to $12.6 billion since the pandemic began. During the past 4 months, the wealth of Hank & Doug Meijer’s wealth has grown nearly a billion more, according to the most recent data from Forbes, which tracks the wealth of billionaires in real time.

The wealth of Hank & Doug Meijer now stands at $13.5 billion. This means that just in the past 4 month, while thousands of families in the Greater Grand Rapids area are unemployed, underemployed, face eviction and are experience food insecurity and malnutrition, the Meijer brothers increased their wealth by $900 million. 

Now, we are not supposed to talk about the wealth gap that exists. Instead, we are told that providing social service solutions for the masses who are suffering is the best that we can do. The fact that most of use go along with this shows how effective the current education systems and the news media are at getting us to blame poor people for being poor, instead of demanding a redistribution of wealth.

We are told that if we don’t like the current political climate that we should vote the right people in. This is just another system of control that those in power want us to believe. It is an illusion. Those of us who are not part of the Billionaire Class should be really pissed off at how much money Hank & Doug Meijer continue to amass, while so much suffering happens in this community.

If workers were really pissed off about the disparity of wealth between what they make and the wealth of Hank & Doug Meijer, they would occupy the stores and the warehouses and not leave until their demands to earn $25 dollars an hour are met. This a demand they could win, since we know that the $900 million Hank & Doug Meijer have made just in the past 4 months would be more than enough to pay all their workers that kind of a wage.

For the rest of us, we should be marching on the Meijer corporate headquarters at 2929 Walker Ave NW, Grand Rapids, making other demands about wealth redistribution. Imagine what $900 million could do to relieve the harm that thousands of families are currently experiencing in the Greater Grand Rapids area. $900 million would eliminate poverty, homelessness, food insecurity and provide plenty of health care funding. Demanding that the Meijer family give $900 million to be distributed to the thousands of families in this area who are experiencing poverty, systemic racism and other forms of structural violence would still leave Hank & Doug Meijer with $12.6 billion, which I’m sure they could still support their families on.