Americans for Tax Fairness has tracked the remarkable increase in the wealth of billionaires during the rise of the pandemic. In NY, 118 billionaires collectively saw their wealth increase by $77.3 billion during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic even as the state’s economy was reeling from a huge spike in joblessness and a collapse in taxes collected, a new report by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and Health Care for America Now (HCAN) shows. Michael Bloomberg, Julia Koch and Stephen Schwarzman—saw their wealth grow by 25%, 26% and 27%, respectively. During about the same period of the pandemic, 2,594,000 of the state’s residents lost their jobs, 387,000 fell ill with the virus and 31,000 died from it. "What profiteth a man to gain additional billions if the society he lives in is overrun with starving, unfed, uneducated children?"