"New Gilded Age" Reaches New Heights With World's Billionaires Owning Staggering $6 Trillion

[LongTomH]

"New Gilded Age" Reaches New Heights With World's Billionaires Owning Staggering $6 Trillion

In an analysis (pdf) published Thursday that throws into stark relief the "unjust and unsustainable" nature of what economists have termed the New Gilded Age, the Swiss financial firm UBS found that the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by 17 percent in 2016, bringing their combined fortune to a record $6 trillion -- more than double the gross domestic product of the United Kingdom.

The report also found that there are 1,542 billionaires in the world and more than 563 in the United States alone, more than any other country.

Josef Stadler, lead author of the UBS analysis, told the Guardian that the firm's findings demonstrate that the world is "now two years into the peak of the second Gilded Age."

...............//snip

But despite insistence from leading economists and institutions like the International Monetary Fund that raising taxes on the wealthy is necessary to shrink the growing gap between the billionaires and everyone else, many global powers are doing precisely the opposite.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week made what economist Thomas Piketty called a "historical error" by drastically slashing the country's wealth tax as part of his sweeping pro-business economic agenda.

The Republican-controlled US Congress, meanwhile, is moving rapidly to adopt a tax plan that would deliver massive gains to the already wealthy while slashing safety net programs that low-income and middle class families depend on for survival.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42399-new-gilded-age-reaches-new-heights-with-world-s-billionaires-owning-staggering-6-trillion

[LongTomH]

1. More from the article:

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, even some billionaires agree that inequality is out of control, and that a more progressive tax code is necessary to remedy the problem.

"Three decades of data prove that tax cuts for the wealthy do not 'trickle down' to working people or grow the overall economy," billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer concluded in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. "Let's raise taxes on the rich.... Let's boost wages to stimulate economic growth and job creation. It's the only way we will create broad prosperity, rebuild the middle class, and give working families a fair shake."

[True Dough]

2. Good for those billionaires

They work so hard for that money while the rest of us are just along for the ride!

[elleng]

3. unsustainable

[Blue_Tires]

4. But hey, at least some yokels in Ohio got to "stick it to the elites" by voting for their boy Donnie