Re: Wall Street Plans $38 Billion of Bonuses as Shareholders Lose
- From: Marco <andymarcos635@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:50:20 -0800 (PST)
Related article, with numbers...
ZNet Commentary
Billionaires Up, America Down
November 19, 2007
By Holly Sklar
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.
.
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