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Tech Rich Get Richer
theodp writes "The economy is improving, at least for the super rich. After two years of declines, the aggregate net worth of the U.S.'s wealthiest 400 citizens leapt 10% in the past year to $995 billion, according to Forbes' annual ranking. The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the East coast to the tech-centric West. Bill Gates capped off a decade in the top spot after his fortune increased by $3B to $46B. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held onto 3rd place, his net worth rising $1B to $22B. Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who saw his fortune expand by more than $3B to $5.1B, was the top gainer on the list. And with a measly $1.4B, Jerry Yang of Yahoo! found himself in a 16-way tie for 162nd place."
55,000,000,000
50 Years 1,100,000,000
12 months 91,666,667
4 weeks 22,916,667
7 days 3,273,810
24 hours 136,409
He could spend 136 Grand an hour for the next 50 years & still have money over, even without interest.
That's a HellOfALotOf Gin & Tonics.
D
What do people do with all this money? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'd really like to know what these people intend to do with such fortunes. I assume part of it is really stocks, and so it's company worth rather than personal worth, but still, I can't see ever needing more than, say, $2-3 million over the course of my entire life.
Why didn't you take the job in Indiana?
evil adrian
It can be quite sobering to find out that you are in the top 0.9% richest people in the world. Thats a hell of a lot of people poorer than you.
I'm sure people will rip this apart because it's based on global data, doesn't take into account cost variations in countries and 101 other things - but give it a go anyway.
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What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever. I'm not advocating communism or socialism, I'm just pointing out a basic truth. None of these people could have conceivably done more useful work than the entire lifetimes work of thousands of people.
Sure, corporate CEOs and super rich are much more productive than the average person....but their brains still tick at a mere 1000hz. They can still only speak at a slowish 150wpm and listen at the same rate. Their memories still have limited durations like all other mortal humans. It just isn't physically possible for them to have done the work of 10,000 other people.
The money was not earned, it was stolen. In most cases, the money was stolen from the shareholders of the corporation in question, who by rights should have either had the money in dividends or seen the money re-invested in the corporate machine.
In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company. Does anyone truly believe Jobs invented the imac and made it's phenomenal success possible? If you believe that, ask Wozniac what Jobs did with Wozniac's work at Atari.
Before someone accuses me of the obvious : no, I am personally involved in any of this. I'm simply noting the truth.
Because there were no good jobs there for my wife, who would have had to give up her well paying job. We would have wound up making less than 10k more without her salary. We decided to tighten our belts a bit more instead. Also, my friend had an opening at his company, but his boss pulled the job literally at the last minute. Of course, now HE does the work of two people.
From the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States:-
Read much?
There are many, many Americans who would disagree with you. Granted, the lot of us aren't losing fingers to meat grinders, which are subsequently fed back to us in hotdogs anymore, but there *was* a recent article on Slashdot (I believe? maybe I read it somewhere else) that this generation is the first in a long, long time to have less than their forebears.
--- What
In George Bush's most recent speech, a new solution was put forward to help create jobs and spur growth, SALARY CAPS! Thats right, just like what we have in sports, a cap on your salary will allow companies to hire more workers with the same money. Add to the fact that we can get rid of overtime pay and make them work harder and longer for free, maybe we can even cut their salary and reduce to exactly $1 above their cost of living and set the cap right there.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The issue with these tax cuts is rather simple. No one is arguing that these tax cuts are an attempt to remedy the unjust taxing of people. The purpose behind these tax cuts as advocated by Republicans is that they will spur economic growth.
The problem is that by definition, rich people are rich because they can buy whatever they want. Reducing their taxes is thus NOT going to have any impact on the economy because these people have no real incentive to spend more, the extra little bit of money is not going to have any impact.
Also, the earned income tax credit was originally a Republican proposal if my memory serves me correctly. The idea behind it is also based on the above logic. Poor people are deemed poor because they DON'T have the money to purchase what they want. By giving them back money (or just giving them money) you are pretty much guaranteed they are going to spend it. If you give $1000 to a person who makes $20,000 a year, they will spend it. GIve $1000 to a person who makes $200,000 a year and has $1.5 million in assets, they might not even cash the check mailed to them by the government.
Now, I will be the first to admit that none of this solves the problem of a consumer driven economy. But, I am struggling as much as the next man. I would much rather improve our currently corrupt economy so I can pay the rent than plan for the future. Once we get things under control, then we can talk about changing the way our society works.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
The poorest of the poor, the ones who are still paying taxes but just barely, but who are responsible enough not to have children that they can't afford, got exactly no tax cut at all. So did the ones who aren't paying taxes, of course. (And yes, they could have: there have been ideas on the books for giving credits to people who don't earn a living wage.) But you wouldn't count those, because they're not 'important', right?
And, of course, you're still being disingenuous. The recent tax cuts were enormously disproportionately aimed at the wealthiest 5% of the population, and designed really not to benefit anyone else, like those who would actually spend the money and stimulate the economy. (Large increases in spending/purchasing are a much better economic stimulus than large increases in investment with no increases in spending, which is what these tax cuts give us. Ask any rational economist.)
And given that this tax cut is likely to be made permanent, and that we're likely to be hit with a full-on capital gains tax moratorium if Bush is reelected, you will have the amusing experience of seeing large numbers of the richest five percent in the country (the 'idle rich') paying literally no federal income taxes at all, whle the middle class works to support the infrastructure of the country that they enjoy. Reagan tried to do that several times, and I believe Bush Sr. did as well.
Bush's economic team is on record as saying, and I believe this is an exact quote, that they needed to 'shift the tax burden down the income spectrum'. I.e., the rich should pay less in taxes and the middle class pay more. You may agree with this, and that's your perogative, but if you claim it's not happening you're either being blind or you're deliberately trying to make it easier for the administration.
Either way, pretty sad.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
This is just a flamebait isn't it?
According to estimates by the Tax Policy Center -- the 2001 tax cut, once fully phased in, will deliver 42 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (Roughly speaking, that means families earning more than $330,000 per year.) The 2003 tax cut delivers a somewhat smaller share to the top 1 percent, 29.1 percent, but within that concentrates its benefits on the really, really rich. Families with incomes over $1 million a year -- a mere 0.13 percent of the population -- will receive 17.3 percent of this year's tax cut, more than the total received by the bottom 70 percent of American families. Indeed, the 2003 tax cut has already proved a major boon to some of America's wealthiest people: corporations in which executives or a single family hold a large fraction of stocks are suddenly paying much bigger dividends, which are now taxed at only 15 percent no matter how high the income of their recipient.
Sounds like TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH to me!!!