Wealth of richest 1% 'equal to other 99%'

[inanna]

Source: BBC

10 minutes ago

The richest 1% now has as much wealth as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam.

It uses data from Credit Suisse from October for the report, which urges leaders meeting in Davos this week to take action on inequality.

Oxfam also calculated that the richest 62 people in the world had as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population.

<snip>

Oxfam predicted that the 1% would overtake the rest of the world this time last year.


Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475

[valerief]

1. Apparently, they must need it.

[Proserpina]

2. they must need it taken away, you mean

for their health, happiness and safety. And ours.

[valerief]

4. Oh, no. They must need it. They always need all the money they have and

a little bit more. Always. They're pigs with no social conscience.



You know, we'd love the rich if they'd only share some of their money to provide us with a safety net. That's all we want. We don't want to take away all their money. But those misers won't part with it. Hoarders, all of them. Pigs.

[trillion]

10. Yep, Animal Farm

[w0nderer]

28. this little ducky wants some porkchops then! n/t

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. and I am sure it is nowhere near enough for them.

[jalan48]

5. Are the Hillary fans getting this? It's important.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, inanna.

[Nihil]

32. Send the to Zimbabwe ...

It's a piece of piss to be a trillionaire there!

[ancianita]

38. The Rothschild family are known trillionaires.

[bulloney]

8. We must give them more! They're the job creators, doncha know?

They're a bunch of sociopaths is what they actually are.

[kairos12]

9. They still the 99% as a bunch of takers.

[brooklynite]

12. Just a guess, but you won't be around that long.

[GP6971]

14. Hmmm.

You're joking right?. BTW, welcome to DU and enjoy your stay.

[GP6971]

19. Seeing they wear hip waders

they don't have bootstraps.

Enjoy

[FailureToCommunicate]

16. You join DU today and this thread is where you make your last stand?

[FailureToCommunicate]

22. Why, yes, I think it would be great for you to give all your money to some bushman in Africa.

Absolutely.

[inanna]

27. Damn.

What'd I miss?

[FailureToCommunicate]

30. you didn't miss much, just a misguided soul, and, perhaps in his political viewpoints...

[MosheFeingold]

34. Me too

I guess it's the same impulse that makes people watch NASCAR for the car wrecks.

I want to see the car wreck post. Ha.

[NutmegYankee]

17. Enjoy your stay.

[TransitJohn]

20. Well

did it ever occur to you that they have created all the wealth that the richest 1% has? Labor's productivity goes up and up, and their wages go down and down, pilfered by the blood sucking finance charlatans who make nothing.

[TransitJohn]

18. More tax cuts for the 'job creators!'

[jtuck004]

23. But we had to re-capitalize the banks, didn't we? Didn't we? n/t

[Igel]

25. Oooh.

My aunt and uncle were in the top 1%, according to this article. He was a steelworker and she worked as a secretary at the VA. They saved and had no kids (that's a recipe for wealth right there--live frugally, don't have kids).

And my parents were, too, for a good long time. Lump sum retirement distribution, house appreciated, savings bonds and other savings. Both were steelworkers.

No, my father's parents were working class and left him nothing but his high school diploma. My mother's father died when she was 5, she was a high-school dropout and got her GED, and her family's wealth went to the biological children of her stepfather.

Wealth of $760k ... I know people with that much and they have jobs. There are more than 7 million people in that category, and I'm willing to speculate that most of them live in Europe and the US. Probably more than 1% of the US population is in that category.

[Travis_0004]

29. Ive always wondered where we draw the line

The fact that I have a fridgr with food in it, and have no concers about what I will eat or where I will sleep puts me in the top 10%.

If we want to be 100% fair, do we all live on 10k a year?

Or is it ok for me to make 100k, if that means somebody is going to make less?

[moondust]

26. Wayyyyy too much leverage

over societies/economies/democracies/humanity. It's absurd and unfortunate that so many supposedly egalitarian governments have failed to create economies that serve their populations reasonably equitably rather than concentrating so much wealth, income, and leverage in so few hands.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

31. The 99% are just jealous of their success.

[hunter]

33. The "1%" meme was a gift to, maybe a creation of, the uber-wealthy...

... just as "natural gas" is a great name for stuff we're mining and using in so many ways that destroy the earth's natural environment. Filthy fracked gas, it's "natural." Bullshit. It's just another disgusting fossil fuel, "Coal Lite."

It's the 99% vs. the 1%. That's bullshit too.

Brawndo, it's got electrolytes! (Well I suppose that's not a big advertising slogan... not yet....)

The most serious problems begin among the less than 100 people who control more than 50% of the world's economic system.

They are so isolated by their wealth, many of them by their own intent, so isolated that they are entirely unable to see what the problems are, even those very few who are not sociopaths skilled at manipulating the political process to their own further advantage.

Any mildly affluent U.S. American is among the 1%. If you can buy a new car, and fly away on vacation once a year without destroying your family budget, then you are affluent, a "one percenter" compared to the rest of the world where many people don't even have a safe place to sleep, good food, or clean water. Frankly I do think the habits and political beliefs of most one-percenters are harmful to the natural environment and human spirit, but they are not the head of the monster.

It's the mostly invisible uber-wealthy who make the world suck, who have us on this planetary death spiral.

I'm not excluding celebrated sharks like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg from this assessment. Even when the uber-wealthy desire to make the world a better place, they never seem to have any clue where to start. Promoting community, sustainable development, lazy low energy industry... all these ideas are alien to everything that made them wealthy. Bill Gates is never going to support a twenty four hour work week with annual eight week vacations for Microsoft employees.

The way I see it, the answer is pretty simple: Tax the uber-wealthy out of existence. Make it impossible for anyone to become so wealthy that they can own or unduly influence the political process at whatever level you care to examine, from local politics to international politics.

The wealthiest guy in a community ought to live within an hour's walk to the home of his lowest paid regular employee (not including household staff kept as slaves or wage slaves, which seems to be another disgusting habit of many uber-wealthy...)

The lowest paid, least wealthy people shouldn't pay any taxes on their income. People making more than twenty times that minimum income ought to be paying very steeply progressive taxes on both their income and personal wealth.

[MosheFeingold]

35. I will say

There is a big difference between say a billionaire investor and a doctor that works his or her ass off 6 days a week (and worked his or ass off to get there, probably since elementary school) and is in the 1%, salary-wise.

I think it was John Rockerfeller who said he favored the income tax because "it would keep the damn Jew doctors and lawyers out of the country club."

Accordingly, I've always been ambivalent about using income tax to try to level the playing field for this reason, in that it can de-insentivize the overachievers of the world.

There has to be balanced combination of various kinds of taxes (including some sort of VAT/consumption/property/wealth/estate) to prevent that.

[hunter]

36. I'm not talking about doctors.

I'm talking about Trumps, Kochs, and even bigger assholes, most of whom are invisible in the popular press.

But still, no. If the lowest paid guy in the hospital laundry is making a living wage, twenty times that wage is a very good income.

If the lowest paid guy in the hospital laundry is living in poverty, that's an obscenity.

[MosheFeingold]

37. I don't disagree with you

I'm talking about how to go about making it work.

It's way more complex than just income tax. Servants, like you and me, have income. Yes, there are very highly paid servants in this world, like doctors and lawyers.

But the really rich -- the .00000001% that own as much as the bottom 50% don't have income. The really rich have investments, and "charitable trusts" and the like.

[TBF]

41. Right there with you -

in our case loans from graduate and law school. Not that being professional isn't a good lifestyle - it's just fine - but that is how many more folks should be living. As the middle class DID live in this country back in the 1950s-60s when folks were actually taxed.

#1 issue - go back to taxing capital gains 100% as they did pre-Reagan. Next, raise that cap on Social Security. Another factor - medicare for all (instead of give aways to insurance & pharma companies)

[MosheFeingold]

42. Concur, in part

What we don't want to crush are the risk-takers, the guys who put all their money and effort into (for example) a franchise or a bolt business or the like.

Those guys (and gals) employ most Americans.

They have "lumpy" income that is like 0,0,0,100,-100, 20,000,000, 0, 0, 0. You need to be able to smooth things over and encourage them to take risks.

The people that get away with no taxes are not the 1%. It's the .000001%. People with net worth of 100 million or above.

We'd need to target the charitable trusts, foundations, and the like that are little more than inter-generational slush funds.

Of course, the professional politicians (both parties) are the beneficiaries of this real wealth, so it's not going to happen.

[TBF]

44. I can agree with that. K&R nt

[Yavin4]

43. It's the new global Monarchy n/t

[ancianita]

39. Welp, here's one list, at least. Now if world taxing entities can locate them, and the money

get put into an internationally monitored, managed escrow fund and distribution system, there might be a fairer way to pull half the planet out of poverty.

Maybe much poverty isn't enforced, but the result of their location and dynamics of their economies.

Still, this that's never been tried seems worth a try. And we can learn whether or not it could do great good.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2015/03/02/forbes-billionaires-full-list-of-the-500-richest-people-in-the-world-2015/#2715e4857a0b464248bd16e3

[TBF]

40. THIS is what it's all about -

and it is the #1 reason to support Bernie Sanders as our candidate on the left.