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Billionaires Up, America Down By Holly Sklar ZNet Commentary 11-22-7
When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.
Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only.
This year, you'd need a Forbes 482 to fit all the billionaires.
A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she'd need another $300 million to reach the Forbes 400 minimum of $1.3 billion. The average Forbes 400 member has $3.8 billion.
When the Forbes 400 began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says Forbes, "Wall Street is king."
Nearly half the 45 new members, says Forbes, "made their fortunes in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer."
The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn't party time for America.
We have a record 482 billionaires -- and record foreclosures.
We have a record 482 billionaires -- and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.
Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires -- and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.
The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won't get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).
Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.
Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.
In 2004, one out of six households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly one out of three households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That's before the mortgage crisis hit.
In 1982, when the Forbes 400 had just 13 billionaires, the highest paid CEO made $108 million and the average full-time worker made $34,199, adjusted for inflation in $2006. Last year, the highest paid hedge fund manager hauled in $1.7 billion, the highest paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage.
The Forbes 400 is even more of a rich men's club than when it began. The number of women has dropped from 75 in 1982 to 39 today.
The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively estimated $1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That amount is more than 11 percent of our $13.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- the total annual value of goods and services produced by our nation of 303 million people. In 1982, Forbes 400 wealth measured less than 3 percent of U.S. GDP.
And the rich, notes Fortune magazine, "give away a smaller share of their income than the rest of us."
Thanks to mega-tax cuts, the rich can afford more mega-yachts, accessorized with helicopters and mini-submarines. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of bridges, levees, mass transit, parks and other public assets inherited from earlier generations of taxpayers crumbles from neglect, and the holes in the safety net are growing.
The top 1 percent of households -- average income $1.5 million -- will save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department, Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest.
The children and grandchildren of today's underpaid workers will pay for the partying of today's plutocrats and their retinue of lobbyists.
It's time for Congress to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and close the loophole letting billionaire hedge fund speculators pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.
Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now.
posted
"Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest."
.......So who is responsible for this type of tax cut???
Posts: 2321 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
No, lockman, you've mixed it up again. It's the rich that perform the "pet projects" the government squanders the money on.......a cheesey way republicans pay them off for the money they contribute to win elections. They don't loose even when they do pay higher taxes, they just don't make as big a profit off the funds of the less financially endowed.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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With great power comes great responsibility.
Can't have one without the other (or...shouldn't, anyway)
Yes, it is time to roll back the tax cuts.
I do agree with Lock about controlling pork barrel spending. Don't know how to tackle that one yet. Maybe link how many special appropriation projects can be introduced in a given year conversely with the size of the national debt?
-------------------- No longer eligible for government service due to lack of tax issues. Posts: 5178 | From: Up North | Registered: Dec 2005
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To whom do we assign the right to determine what exactly is and isn't pork barrel spending.
For example, Viet Nam vets can be considered a special interest group. Does that mean the Viet Nam memorial was a pork barrel project?
Is earth quake detection and warning studies in California pork barrel?
Maybe this stuff, like porn is something you know when you see it? But that may mean different people honestly and honorably disagree about somethings being pork barrel. (I always wanted to know why the devil he was looking at it in the first place when he just happened to notice it was porn.)
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lockman: Tax the rich and let government geniuses spend it on useless pet projects. That'll make them think twice before trying to be successful again.
here's how i see it, the richer you are? the more you have to protect. and the US Governmnet is supposed to protect US all...
the Mars missions don't even cost as much as the Yankee infeild..
oops i mean they don't cost as much as A-rod...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
sounds exactly like the Roman empire. ... what ever happened to those guys ? ...
-------------------- "Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over." Herbert Hoover 1930 Posts: 678 | From: currently in hiding due to investigation | Registered: Oct 2004
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Yeah, the Roman Empire and French royalty and Zarist Russia and .....
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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There is a lot of class-envy in that article. America truly is the land of opportunity and I applaud those that have become successful! Most of these people are hugely successful because they are smart and work hard. Moreover, we have the same opportunity to become successful - all it takes is a little hard work.
On the other hand, many people in the lower class are LAZY. In fact, they are too lazy to work! I see this EVERY day in my rental property business. You would be shocked at the huge number of people who are healthy but just too lazy to work. Guess who pays for all these deadbeats? You and I do. We pay their Section 8 (to me) for their housing. We pay for their food (food stamps). We pay for their healthcare (medicaid). We even pay for their rental security deposit through another government program. No wonder they're too lazy to work, we do EVERYTHING for them!!!
Now, that's what makes me mad!
The rich are contributing to society. The lazy are sucking the life out of our society.
posted
" Moreover, we have the same opportunity to become successful - all it takes is a little hard work."
One can tell, you never had to try and go to college on an empty stomach and paying for a $90 physics textbook didn't maen you couldn't eat for a month.
"all it takes is a little hard work", my ass.
Try working two full time jobs and a full load of college courses while you're trying to feed a family and paying off mama's hospital bills a year after you got out of high school. It's a damned site more than a little hard work.
Might be that "On the other hand, many people in the lower class are LAZY.", but no where near most of them. GET REAL!
You, on the other hand, are a whole lot of a wiseass lazy intellect and an arrogant dumbass, passing off that line of bs as if having had it easy and not understanding what hard work is anoints you as an authorirty.
So, who give a s--t what makes you mad, because your kind turns my stomach.
Your post is an advertisement for a spoiled arrogant rich fool's selfish egocentric view of the rest of the world.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
At today's cost of tuition and books, I would never have had ANY hope of an education. I know that would be true for many many of those I went to school with too.
We lived in basements of condemned buildings and tents in the woods, taking showers in the dressing rooms of the school gym and had a diet of oatmeal and powdered milk and peanut butter on stale bread much of the time. I seldom had the money for even used textbooks and had to get by without, whenever someone else like me had the one I needed checked out of the library.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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It seems that I struck a nerve. You are correct in that I should have said that becoming rich requires A LOT OF HARD WORK AND SACRIFICE!
I am, however, correct that many (if not most) people in the lower class are lazy. I deal with these people every day. In addition, this population has a high incidence of drunks, druggies, and criminals. You can say it isn't so, but that is not the reality.
posted
"At today's cost of tuition and books, I would never have had ANY hope of an education. I know that would be true for many many of those I went to school with too."
That's just not true. Today, low income students not only get their tuition, books, and housing paid for by the government, they also get paid to go to school. I have many tenants that are doing that very thing right now. With a little hard work, some of these tenants will become successful and move to the middle class. America is the land of opportunity. Did I mention that?
posted
"I am, however, correct that many (if not most) people in the lower class are lazy.
Bulls--t!
"I deal with these people every day. In addition, this population has a high incidence of drunks, druggies, and criminals. You can say it isn't so, but that is not the reality."
More Bulls--t!
What is it, I wonder, that you are doing wrong that you can not see the hard work these people do. Yours is no different from the jerks whose only concern with Mexicans coming across the border is that it provides an excuse to pump the republican smoke screen machine to cover up the Party's failures and inadequate policies and programs. They, like you choose to see the minorities that are sick and failures and deadbeats and ignore the mzsses that labor on hands and knees, all day, with an opressive sun beating down on them, as they picks the cotton lettuce in our fields for infinitesimal wages. There are many reasons to be concerned with our immigration problems, but the silly notion that those people are evil or lazy or dishonest to the core, is a bunch of narrow minded bigotry, exactly like yours is toward poor people.
Feed them well and provide even adequate health care and educational opportinities and they will become way more energetic and able to work and you won't be seeing the sick and the defeated that have no chance to be other than failures in a social system that squeezes the emotional life from their very bones and leaves them little more than hopeless derelicts, empty vessels in an ocean of lost hope.
Being ever promised you have no right or chance to succeed because you weren't "born right" or fell behind in the incessant race for wealth is crippling if not completely devastating and that is all you are allowing to the poor.
Maybe you should offer a bit more, economically, certainly, but more so in terms of respect and concern, to the poor people that you have to deal with and see if that doesn't attract a higher class of person that can then respect you in return. They may be defeated and poor and hungry, but they are not dumb and can read your attitude and bias even when you only project it with body language. Why would they waste the energy showing you, the know it all that hates them and who has closed mind on the subject, anything at all, particularly anything you already plan to deny.
Here is another myth you are passing around,
"Today, low income students not only get their tuition, books, and housing paid for by the government, they also get paid to go to school."
BULLS__T
It ain't that easy and it never pays all and everything like you say it does. Even for those that qualify for loans, they do not pay for everything.
That person that does get one of those loans has already started his (or her) life behind a pretty large 8-ball by setting out in life saddled with all those years of debt to repay the loan. How does he manage after that to pay the rent or mortgage and feed little junior and his sister Sally and lay aside funds for his and the wife's retirement and the kids college and insurance and - - - ???????
"Did I mention that?" you say....
You mentioned a line of arrogant cliches popular at republican fund raising dinners, where they feed the hatred, bigotry, and egos, of well to do elitist Party line doners that are there hoping to buy more years of special treatement for themselves via the Party's efforts and policies, so they can continue to oppress and collect the monies of the masses they so deeply despise.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
ignore the mzsses that labor on hands and knees, all day, with an opressive sun beating down on them, as they picks the cotton lettuce in our fields for infinitesimal wages.
are you Arlo Guthrie?
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Maybe I oughtn't to tell ya Pete uzta call as the seasons change for inspiration, him and Ronny Dugger.
Back when Ronny couldn't find a job he hung out at my place to mooch beer and balogna sandwiches festooned with a thick slice of sweet Burmuda onion and a a generous smear of horse radish mustard. The early stirrings of the Texas Observer were hatched over the remains of a keg of Mickie in my living room on 13th Street in Austin.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
No, just a republican scheme to funnel money from the treasury to the vastly wealthy, while assuring that money comes from the poor and middle class
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Oh there you go, bringing class into it again...
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: Maybe I oughtn't to tell ya Pete uzta call as the seasons change for inspiration, him and Ronny Dugger.
Back when Ronny couldn't find a job he hung out at my place to mooch beer and balogna sandwiches festooned with a thick slice of sweet Burmuda onion and a a generous smear of horse radish mustard. The early stirrings of the Texas Observer were hatched over the remains of a keg of Mickie in my living room on 13th Street in Austin.
excellent... I remember being in college when Dugger would come around...lol, almost the same scene... and he would absolutely hold court! The Observer's huntin' an editor, again, btw
quote:Originally posted by Propertymanager: Nothing comes FROM the poor. The poor don't pay income taxes in America. However, the top 1% of income earners pay 40% of all income taxes!
Mike
actually? you need to account for social security in there too cuz the Govt spends it all and then some too..
the "poor" pay much more than the "rich" in terms of percentage of income...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
and for the biggest paychecks of all? The compensation of private equity and hedge fund managers has become a hot button issue as their pay has skyrocketed. James Simons, chairman of Renaissance Technologies, earned $1.7 billion last year while the average compensation of the top 25 managers was $570 million, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.
you have to consider this:
Scrutiny on Tax Rates That Fund Managers Pay By JENNY ANDERSON Published: June 13, 2007 Mr. Rubin, now the chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup, was responding to a question posed to him about whether the 20 percent fee on profits that most private equity firms charge should continue to be taxed at the lower capital gains rate of 15 percent or changed to the top ordinary income tax rate of 35 percent. Mr. Rubin, who said he was expressing his own views and not that of his employer, was a panelist at a tax reform conference run by the Hamilton Project, a policy group initiated mostly by moderate Democrats from business and academia that is housed at the Brookings Institution.
quote:Originally posted by Propertymanager: Nothing comes FROM the poor. The poor don't pay income taxes in America. However, the top 1% of income earners pay 40% of all income taxes!
Mike
really?
who you think does the work for that contractor who overcharged you?
Sure, sure...some crews are well run, and paid fairly...
But the working poor do one hell of a lot of the labor in this country. Not talking about welfare cheats, homeless, etc... but the working stiff who lives hand to mouth. And in many cases nowadays, these are folk who were drawing professional salaries not so awfully long ago.
Just one example: those 25k laid-off from Chrysler? GM hiring them? Ford? Toyota? maybe a few...where's the rest of 'em going to work when their "parachute" folds up?
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