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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWealth of world’s 400 richest billionaires rose $92 billion in 2014
Wealth of worlds 400 richest billionaires rose $92 billion in 2014
Figure hits $4.1 trillion
By Andre Damon
wsws.org, 3 January 2015
The wealthiest 400 people in the world saw their combined net worth grow by $92 billion last year, hitting $4.1 trillion. The bonanza for the super-rich was underwritten by governments and central banks around the world, which fueled surging stock markets and record corporate profits by pumping hundreds of billions into the financial markets.
The figures were provided by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which was initiated in 2012 and tracks the wealth of the 400 richest people in the world.
The combined net worth of these 400 individuals is greater than the gross domestic product of Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world. The average net worth of each of the billionaires grew by $240 million, to $10.25 billion.
Since the 2008 financial crash, which triggered multi-trillion-dollar bank bailouts and the infusion into the financial system of trillions more in virtually free cash, the wealth of the super-rich has nearly doubled. The net worth of the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans increased from $1.27 trillion in 2009 to $2.29 trillion in 2014.
SNIP...
Investor Warren Buffett, the worlds second richest man, according to the Bloomberg list, saw his wealth grow to $74.5 billion, up by $13.7 billion, or more than 22 percent, in the past year. Buffetts wealth has more than doubled since 2009.
Bloomberg noted that dozens of operating businesses the 84-year-old chairman bought over the past five decades churned out record profit over the past year. Buffetts business model has been to buy traditional industries such as railroads and food producers, then ruthlessly cut costs, making billions in the process. Buffetts businesses have profited handsomely from the ongoing fall in labor costs, which have been dropping year after year since 2008 as a result of falling wages and cuts in benefits for workers.
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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/03/bill-j03.html
Happy. Daze. Are. Here. Again.
progressoid
(49,999 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)One way the the have-mores get more:
Americas Ridiculously Rich: the 2014 Edition
by Sam Pizzigati
Bill Moyers, Oct. 10, 2014
EXCERPT...
Ellison also likes to play basketball, even on his yachts. If a ball bounces over the railing, no problem. Ellison has a powerboat following his yacht, the Wall Street Journal noted this past spring, to retrieve balls that go overboard.
Hiring that ball-retriever qualifies Ellison as a job creator, right? Maybe not. Ellison has regularly destroyed jobs on his way to grand fortune. He has become, over the years, a master of the merge-and-purge two-step: First you snatch your rivals customers, then you fire its workers.
In 2005, for instance, Ellison shelled out $10.6 billion to buy out PeopleSoft, an 11,000-employee competitor. He then proceeded to put the ax to 5,000 jobs .
Five years later, Ellison bought out Sun Microsystems and indignantly denied that any massive layoff would be in the offing. Five months later, Ellisons Oracle quietly acknowledged a major downsizing in an official federal regulatory filing.
Job massacres like these have been hollowing out Americas middle class ever since Forbes started annually identifying the nations richest 400 back in the 1980s. Since 1989, Federal Reserve figures show, the median net worth of families in Americas statistical middle class the middle 20 percent of income earners has dropped from $75,300 to $61,700, after taking inflation into account.
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http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/10/americas-ridiculously-rich-2014-edition/
It takes taking money to make real money these days.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)A key thread of the American dream ethos is that we all have the opportunity to get rich through our own wits and hard work, a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of storyline. And a key pathway to building that personal wealth is saving and investing the money we earn.
It turns out, however, that the wealthy have yet another advantage for creating their own American dream. As the chart below illustrates, the average rate of return on wealth holdings increases as income rises. In other words, the more income you have, the higher your rate of return and the more wealth you build. The poorer you are, the more difficult it is earn a return on, and build, your savings. So, in other words, wealth begets wealth. Doesnt it seem like Americans need a new dream?
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http://www.populareconomics.org/economic-find-wealth-begets-wealth/
moondust
(20,006 posts)Party time!!!! Break out the cat food!!!!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Les Leopold
Huffington Post, 07/07/2009
Friday's New York Times (July 3, 2009) provides not one, but two blatant examples of what happens when we allow money to concentrate in the hands of the few.
The first concerns the successful lobbying efforts by financial institutions to kill new legislation that would permit bankruptcy judges to change the terms of home mortgages. The financial industry, including banks that received billions in TARP funds and loan guarantees, spent heavily to lobby Congress. According to NYT reporter Stephen Labaton, they convinced several key Democrats that any attempt to alter the amount of the mortgage or its rate, "would push up interest rates and slow the housing market's recovery, even though academic studies have countered such claims." As a result, judges can reduce all other creditor claims during personal bankruptcies, except the banks' mortgages. And we paid for that lobbying! (Read it here.)
NYT columnist Floyd Norris gives us the second appalling example of the raw power of money. He discusses a newly released study, "Watch What I Do, Not What I say" by the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at the "Homeland Investment Act of 2004" pushed through Congress by large corporations. The act gave global U.S-based companies an enormous tax break on overseas profits if they brought the money home to invest in research and development, new plant and equipment and other job-producing efforts. As a result of the bill, corporations did indeed bring back $299 billion in profits, on which they paid a little more than 5% in taxes -- quite a deal when compared to their normal 35 percent rate. (see here)
So where did all that money go? According to the authors (including a former Bush Administration official) about 92 percent ended up in the pockets of shareholders either through dividends or increased share buy-backs. In other words, taxpayer money that was supposed to support tangible investments in the real economy went into the pockets of the investor class.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/fear-and-looting-in-ameri_b_212023.html
Initech
(100,102 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)What Göring said seems to apply:
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring in conversation with prison psychologist and U.S. Army Captain Gustave M. Gilbert.
SOURCE: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/235519.html
Göring would commit suicide by cyanide tablet a short time later, the coward. His descendants want us to march on, away from the monster in the castle.
enki23
(7,790 posts)taught_me_patience
(5,477 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)A YEAR!
GIVE TO THE HILLARY CAMPAIGN, BECAUSE SOMEWHERE, A BILLIONAIRE DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY.
GO HILARY!
jdenver_2624
(50 posts)These fat cats need to be taxed as much as possible. Then and only then can we start making any real progress in dealing with our massive income inequality.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Cheap labor!! Right here in the US!
Who would have thought that could ever happen here?
So long as the Stock Market is soaring, everything is just fine!
tuhaybey
(76 posts)The bottom line is that we just can't afford to keep dedicating this much of the world GDP, or the US GDP, to the uber rich. Look at how the amount of GDP the top 0.1% collects compares to other national priorities like defense or welfare here.