wealth Archives - whoar.co.nz

Families with money are getting progressively richer – simply for being rich in the first place.

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It’s the American dream.

A third of Americans think they’ll be rich someday.

More than half of 18–29 year olds think they will be.

Less than 5% actually make it.*

And many of those do it the old-fashioned way: they inherit it.

About 60% of U.S. household wealth is inherited.

Between a quarter and a third of Forbes 400 billionaires got rich that way.

It may not be the most common way to get there – but it’s widespread and it’s surely the easiest way.

That aspiration to wealth is deeply understandable.

Getting high income from a good job is all well and good but because wealth begets more wealth — people are compensated simply for owning things — wealth is potentially forever.

It persists and spreads through families and dynasties.

Wealth can and often does – endure for generations.

So it’s worth asking: how do Americans accumulate wealth?

And how does that vary across income and wealth classes?

How do the bottom 50% accumulate wealth – for instance – compared to the top 1%?

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Source: New Data Reveal the Depressing Truth About How Wealth Is Amassed in America | Alternet

Two things are clear: radical new ways of getting rich have been invented and things have probably never been this unequal since before the second world war.

Oxfam’s latest report claims that income inequality has reached a new global extreme – exceeding even its predictions from the previous year.

The figures behind this claim are striking – just 62 individuals now hold the same wealth as the bottom half of humanity compared with 80 in 2014 and 388 in 2010.

It appears that not only have the global elite weathered the financial crisis but their fortunes have collectively improved.

Our objections to inequality the report notes are not driven simply by a desire to improve our own material standard of living.

Rising inequality is one of the surest signs of the failure of economic growth to make things better for us all.

The accompanying decline in the income shares of the bottom 50% since 2010 suggests that although governments across the world have been quick to tout their role in bringing about a global ‘recovery’ the rewards of that recovery have been very selectively spread.

It would be foolish to pretend wealth inequality is a product of the liberal capitalism of the past couple of hundred years.

Peppered throughout recorded history are examples of exceptional wealth deriving from the spoils of empire and warfare – the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus is thought to have controlled the equivalent of $4.6tn – one-fifth of the total wealth of the empire.

The richest man in history according to Time magazine was Mansa Musa the king of Timbuktu who ruled from 1280 to 1337 – when his kingdom was the biggest producer of gold in the world.

His wealth says Time is beyond calculation: [he was] ‘richer than anyone could describe’.

Historical figures show how important military and legal force was for wealth accumulation – from the lands of Genghis Khan in the 13th century (once the largest empire in history) to the Chinese emperor Shenzong who possessed up to 30% of global GDP at the height of his power in the 11th century.

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Source: Was there ever a time when so few people controlled so much wealth? | Eoin Flaherty | Opinion | The Guardian

‘how wealth is amassed in america’..

Was there ever a time when so few people controlled so much wealth?..

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