Bernie Sanders on wealth-inequality: what the evidence says · JRE #1330
“And we got one guy who's worth $155 billion. How great? Oh, by the way, we're building more nuclear weapons. And we're spending $750 billion a year on the military.”
What the evidence says
This episode (JRE #1330) aired around August 2019. At that time, Forbes' tracking of the world's richest person, Jeff Bezos, put his net worth at roughly $114-115 billion (as of September 2019), well below the $155 billion figure cited, and down from a roughly $131 billion peak reported in March 2019 before his divorce settlement reduced his Amazon stake. Bezos's wealth did not reach $155 billion until later; it crossed $200 billion only in August 2020. Notably, elsewhere in this same interview Sanders cites the same billionaire's wealth at $150 billion, suggesting the $155 billion figure reflects imprecise rounding rather than a distinctly sourced data point. On military spending, the fiscal year in effect when this episode aired (FY2019) carried a national-defense topline in the roughly $700s-billion range; the next authorization, the $738 billion FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act, was not signed into law until December 17, 2019, months after this interview, and even that figure falls short of the $750 billion Sanders cites. Both figures Sanders gives are higher than the documented totals for the relevant period, though they are in the correct order of magnitude and became closer to accurate for later fiscal years and billionaire net-worth peaks.