Billionaire Bill Gates and World Bank head Jim Yong Kim at the 2016 edition of the hyper-elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Credit: AP/Michel Euler

As right-wing politicians around the world gathered power by scapegoating immigrants for the economic struggles of working people, the world’s richest people got nearly a quarter trillion dollars richer in 2016.

The 500 wealthiest individuals on a planet of roughly 8 billion humans gained $237 billion in personal net worth over the year, according to Bloomberg.

Those massive investment gains followed similarly massive convulsions — a natural byproduct of beginning the investing year with incredible wealth. The same microfraction of the species was almost $400 billion in the hole by Valentine’s Day, then up more than $300 billion in the months before Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in November’s election, before slumping to the mere $237,000,000,000 net gain by year’s end, Bloomberg reports.

The poorest 2.4 billion adults worldwide have an average wealth of under a thousand bucks, […]