Trickle-Up Economics: New Report Reveals Staggering Global Wealth Concentration

[babylonsister]

Trickle-Up Economics: New Report Reveals Staggering Global Wealth Concentration

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted October 8, 2007.

A new business study on global household wealth documents how the world's wealth is continuing to concentrate in the pockets of the awesomely affluent.


The world's non-wealthy households haven't done so well over the last half-dozen years, says a new report released last week by a major global business consulting company.

From 2001 through 2006, reports the Boston Consulting Group, the non-wealthy of the world -- those households holding less than $100,000 in financial assets -- saw the total value of their assets slightly decline.

Over those same years, the consulting group's new Global Wealth 2007 documents, total world wealth actually increased, up a brisk 7.5 percent just last year alone

So where did all that new wealth end up? At the top. So far this century, the 16.5 percent of global households with at least $100,000 to invest have seen their assets soar 64 percent in value, to $84.5 trillion.

A huge chunk of that wealth has settled in the portfolios of millionaire households, those families with at least $1 million in "assets under management" -- a wealth scorecard calculation that excludes personal residences as well as jewelry, artwork, and other luxury collectibles.

These millionaire households, just 0.7 percent of the globe's total households, now hold over a third of the world's wealth. Where will you find these millionaire households? Nearly half hail from North America, with about a quarter from Europe.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/64693/

[aquart]

1. Guilotine.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Pike Poles. The Spit.

n/t

[aquart]

5. Pike poles.

In the spirit of compromise.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. I have long felt...

That progressivism should be more muscular. ;-)

[leftist_not_liberal]

13. You're right

And with impending near ecocide and the regular folks pushed into a subsistence police state while the "millionaire households, just 0.7 percent of the globe's total households, now hold over a third of the world's wealth" do fine in their walled estates, it is not long until the great mass of people are the potential 'terrorists' we keep getting warned about...

[aquart]

16. It won't be that.

I'm not even sure they'll be able to hang on to their wealth. We are going to lose islands (got any cash in the Bahamas or Channel Islands?) and we are going to lose our coastal regions, seaports, cities. That means millions of refugees on a land strained by new diseases and massive crop failures.

There was once a movie entitled Escape from New York. Well, millions will have to, won't we? And I think about the armed guards on the bridge out of New Orleans.

If our federal system holds up under that, we will indeed be a wondrous nation.

[populistdriven]

19. You aren't happy with your cake? nt

[aquart]

15. In many ways, it is good I do not rule the world.

[Yavin4]

2. And We Wonder Why Terrorism, Genocides, Religious Fanactism, Wars, etc Are On The Rise

The one true path to a peaceful world is a world wide middle class. When people go to sleep at night knowing that they will be able to feed their children tomorrow, there's less violence in the world.

[Hydra]

9. You could do better

all of us could be in the top 10%- much of the behavior of the wealthy actually REDUCES wealth overall.

It was a disgusting epiphany I had when I realized that it isn't enough for these people to be beyond uber rich- they have to make it impossible for others to have any chance of having 1/10 of what they have.

[Yavin4]

20. The Uber-Rich Don't Want Their Vacation Spots Over-run with Riff Raff

Don't want the lower classes being able to afford what we have.

[Hydra]

21. I know

Cuz they're just so much better than us commoners! :sarcasm:

We were supposed to have left that behind in this country...but here we go again. Nobles vs. Serfs.

[killbotfactory]

3. And yet most of the people in resource rich third world countries remain poor

And our country does everything in it's power to keep things that way.

[Rex]

6. Wealthy people eat poor babies.

[Blackhatjack]

7. Goes Beyond Government Policy that Makes This Possible --IT IS IMMORAL

It is not even a difficult call to make.

Is ownership of luxury homes, cars, jewelry, etc. by a few MORE IMPORTANT than making sure everyone has the basics of life(ie. food, shelter, healthcare)?

How hard is that one?

[leftist_not_liberal]

12. AMORAL

That's the logic of capitalism.

You cannot reform away such an inherent characteristic.

[TroubleMan]

10. Explained pretty well by Max Keiser in these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z66kmPRl5Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3H6uEyR66M

____

These two are also related, and are very good as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjglR2KYz5o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPRoQ7OxZAQ

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Not too difficult to figure out why, when you consider that the government

is 100% on their side.

They're not taking a chunk of taxes from them so they can invest in portfolios that invest in the lower and middle class. Of course, it's a sweet deal, because the rate of return is phenomenal and you also have government protection if the investment goes belly up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1997233&mesg_id=1997233

[starroute]

14. Years ago I saw a mathematical explanation ...

... of why the rich tend to get richer.

I don't remember the details, but it had to do with fractals, strange attractors, and that sort of thing and was pretty convincing. In real world terms, once you're rich you can set your money to earning more money and to protecting yourself against loss. But if you're poor, you have to pay more for everything and are unlikely ever to get out of the pit. So money tends to flow towards existing money, and there is no built-in counterflow to prevent it.

This is why every society has had some sort of mechanism for redistribution. Among nomadic hunters, where you could only own as much as you could carry, it was automatic that any extra had to be given away or left behind. But as soon as people settled down and started accumulating stuff, institutions came into being to limit that accumulation -- whether the potlatches of the Pacific Northwest or the Egyptian pharaohs storing grain against times of famine or oriental despots giving away their weight in gold.

Our culture is the only one I can think of offhand that has made redistribution a dirty word and convinced a majority of its citizens that it isn't necessary. Unfortunately, it's not only necessary but inevitable -- and the only optional bits are how bloody things have to get along the way.

[Skidmore]

17. Has to do with greed, blatant greed, and

fear from the masses.

[JHB]

26. Shorter version:

The Top is a sponge. It won't trickle down unless squeezed.

[guitar man]

18. AKA "Trickled On" economics

for the rest of us :(

[applegrove]

22. No country can stand unfettered capitalism because only the very rich win.

There always must be mitigating policies (like land reform, progressive taxes, affirmative action, health care, good public schools, etc..) in order for capitalism to work. And as the whole planet goes..the USA (some in the USA) are the uber elite. And unless their wealth is mitigated globally and share some of the wealth with the people...unless we do this...it will just lead to instability and more places like the middle east where you have very poor people not getting a kick at the can and grabbing at alternative lives (like radical islam) to try and cope or fight back.

[DemReadingDU]

23. morning kick

[lonestarnot]

25. Thank'n you for it.

[lonestarnot]

24. Class war class war class war raging and nobody trying to do a damn thing about it.

hmmmmf.