First, it was Richard Branson plus friends, then it was Jeff Bezos with his cronies taking expensive joy rides into space to experience a few minutes of a high.
“We’ve now reached stratospheric inequality,” Oxfam’s Deepak Xavier said in a statement Monday. “Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change, and starvation.”
Xavier pointed to a recent Oxfam report showing that 11 people on Earth are dying of hunger every minute, just one example of the needless hardship that billions are experiencing while billionaires take a rocketship trip.
“The ultra-rich are being propped up by unfair tax systems and pitiful labor protections,” said Xavier. “Bezos pays next to no U.S. income tax but can spend $7.5 billion on his own aerospace adventure. Bezos’ fortune has almost doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic. He could afford to pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and still be richer than he was when the pandemic began.”
“Class warfare is Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson becoming $250 billion richer during the pandemic, paying a lower tax rate than a nurse, and racing to outer space while the planet burns and millions go without healthcare, housing, and food,” tweeted Warren Gunnels, staff director for Sen. Bernie Sanders
Soon it will be Elon Musk and his Space X.
Virgin Group hopes will be the start of a series of commercial space flights—for those who can cover the high cost of a ticket.
“About two million people can afford to go to space, according to equity analysts at Vertical Research Partners, with that high-net-wealth population growing at around 6% each year,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week. “It estimates that Virgin needs to transport around 1,700, or about 0.08% of those individuals, to space each year for its model to work.”
Virgin Galactic says it has collected around $80 million in sales and deposits by selling tickets at roughly $250,000.
Bezos with Blue Origin is reportedly planning to charge upwards of $300,000 per seat for future 11-minute flights, which will feature several minutes of weightlessness just past the edge of space.
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