Bernie Sanders Slams Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg's Fortunes: Critics Question His Own $2.5M Net Worth

Bernie Sanders has set the fortunes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg against a federal minimum wage that has not moved since 2009, and the replies turned the question back on the senator's own estimated $2.5M (£1.9M). His post puts Musk at $719B (£541B) today against $2B (£1.5B) in 2012, and closes on one word: 'Obscene.'

The comparison landed at a moment when every part of it can be checked. The wealth lines come from a public ranking, the wage line from federal statute, which is why the argument moved so quickly from whether the numbers are right to whether the man citing them ought to be citing them at all.

Three fortunes sit at the top of the daily rich lists, and the wage beneath them has been fixed by law for 17 years, as the post below shows.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index put Musk at $719B on 26 July 2026, Bezos at $255B (£192B), and Zuckerberg at $212B (£159B). All three match the post exactly.

The 2012 comparators do not come from the same place. Musk's $2B, Bezos' $18.4B (£13.8B), and Zuckerberg's $17.5B (£13.2B) are Forbes' figures from its 2012 billionaires list. Mixing two rankings does not break the point, since both show the same direction of travel, but the two houses value private holdings differently, which is worth knowing before anyone treats the gap as precise.

The Wage Line Is the Part That Has Not Moved

The US Department of Labour sets the federal minimum at $7.25 (£5.45) an hour, a rate that took effect on 24 July 2009 and has not moved since. No gap that long has opened between increases since the floor was created in 1938. Thirty states and Washington DC have legislated above it, so most American workers are covered by a higher local rate.

British readers have a sharper reference point. The National Living Wage rose to £12.71 an hour on 1 April 2026 on the Low Pay Commission's advice, more than double the American floor at current exchange rates, and it is reviewed every year rather than every 17 years.

Where the $2.5M Figure Comes From

Sanders' own finances were pulled into the thread within the hour, first by an automated account that answered with a range rather than a number, as the reply below shows.

Senate disclosures cannot settle the question. They report assets in broad bands, exclude a member's own home, and produce no single total. His 2025 filing, covering 2024, lists $148,750 (£112,000) in book royalties paid by Penguin Random House and a Burlington pension of $6,221.52, on a Senate salary of $174,000 (£131,000).

Everything above that is reconstruction. OpenSecrets, which no longer updates its congressional tracker, last put him at $513,513 (£386,100) for 2018. Forbes valued the couple at about $2.5M in 2019, and that seven-year-old figure is the one still in circulation. Forbes separately totted up roughly $2.5M in book advances and royalties paid to him between 2011 and 2022, a different measure that gets mistaken for the same number. Readings counting only trackable accounts land nearer $1M; ones that add property equity reach $3M (£2.3M).

The Arithmetic That Does Not Hold

A third post ran the sum anyway, pairing a percentage rise in the senator's wealth with employee numbers at the three men's companies, as the post below shows.

The percentage only works if both ends measure the same thing, and they do not. A 2012 estimate based on disclosure minimums and maximums is not comparable to a 2026 estimate that incorporates home equity. The resulting figure describes a change of method as much as a change of fortune.

The headcount line has the same trouble. Staff at Amazon or Tesla work for companies their founders own and profit from; a congressional office is funded by taxpayers and capped by rule. Whether a millionaire senator is the right messenger for this argument is a fair question to ask. Whether these numbers answer it is a different one.