Richest 2 % Fat Cats own more than half the world: study

[krsna]

<table class="legacyNestedTable" id="HeaderTable"><tbody><tr><td id="HeaderDataCell">Richest 2 % own more than half the world: study

 

Tue Dec 5, 2006 8:12 AM EST

 

HELSINKI (Reuters) -

 

Two percent (2%)of adults have more than half (>50%)of the world's wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.

 

While global income is distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is even more skewed, the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University said.

 

"Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 percent of total world wealth," the survey showed.

 

The Helsinki-based institute said its study was the first global research on the topic, for which there is only limited data.

 

"We've estimated that the richest 2 percent of adults own more than half of global wealth, while the bottom half own 1 percent,":mad2: said institute director Anthony Shorrocks.

 

 

He likened the situation to that where, in a group of 10 people, one person has $99, while the remaining nine share $1.

 

"If you think income has been distributed unequally, wealth has been distributed even more unequally," Shorrocks said.

 

According to the study, in 2000 a couple needed capital of $1 million to be among the top 1 percent on the wealth list -- the richest 37 million people in the world.

 

More than one in every two of those people lives in the United States or Japan.

 

And it found that net assets of $2,200 per adult would put a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution.

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[Sridas]

:puke: :puke:

[Guest guest]

The following comes from a writer named John Medaille:

w ww.medaille.com/distributivism.htm

 

The Street Car Conspiracy

 

In 1922, Alfred P. Sloan, the President of

General Motors, had a problem. The company had

lost $65 million, an enormous sum of money in

those days, and Sloan concluded that the market

was saturated. Although only one in ten Americans

owned a car, all who wanted one seemed to have

one already, and the automobile business would be

a slow-growth, replacement business. At that

time, 90% of all trips were taken by rail, mostly

electric rail and trolleys. There were 1,200

separate street-car companies and virtually every

city over 2,500 people had an electric trolley

line. So long as there was a viable alternative

to the automobile, the growth of the industry

would be limited. Sloan, therefore, set out to eliminate the alternative. [1]

 

Sloan set up a special unit within GM with the

goal of first destroying the electric trains and

replacing them with buses, and then eliminating

the transport companies entirely. GM’s first move

was to attack the sources of the trolley line’s

financing; GM used its leverage with the railroad

companies and banks who were often the primary

investors in the trolley lines. For example, they

went to the Southern Pacific Railroad, the owner

of the Los Angeles’s Pacific Electric trolleys,

and threatened to move their freight business to

another company if PE did not scrap the trolleys

and convert to buses. They went to banks that

lent money to street car lines and promised them

millions in additional deposits if they would

convince the rail lines to convert to buses.

Finally, GM lobbied congress to pass a law

forcing local electric companies to divest

themselves of street car company stocks; since

the trolleys were large consumers of electric

power, electric companies were often heavy investors in them.

 

When these tactics were of no avail, they formed

holding companies to buy up the rail lines. These

companies were usually formed in partnership with

Firestone Tire and Rubber, Standard Oil Company,

and other similar firms. These holding companies

always followed the same pattern. They would buy

up the local street car company, tear up the

tracks and scrap the trolleys, and purchase buses

from GM to replace the whole system. Since the

tracks and trolleys represented the bulk of the

capital of the companies, the immediate effect

was to wreck the finances of the company so that

bankruptcy was the predetermined outcome.

 

The results were dramatic. In city after city, as

the street car lines went bankrupt, automobile

sales exploded; sales in the cities with ruined

transportation companies doubled, then doubled

again, and kept climbing. Automobile ownership,

which was relatively static between the late 20’s

and the late 40’s, exploded in the 50’s until

nearly every family had at least one car, if not

two or three.[2] The success of GM’s strategy can

be judged by the fact that car ownership is still

much lower in cities that have viable public

transportation systems. In New York City, for

example, only 46% of households owned cars in

2000, while on Manhattan the number was only 23%.[3]

 

But the results went far beyond the

transportation industries. The very shape of our

cities, indeed the very shape of our lives, has

been determined by Sloan’s strategy. The needs of

the automobile determined, to a great extent, all

government policy. The car, unlike the railways,

required expensive road beds that only the

government seemed capable of building and

maintaining. The roads, in turn, led to an

expansion of populations into suburbs, which in

turn required more roads. The automobile quickly

exhausted domestic supplies of oil, which

required us to intervene in distant lands to

secure supplies. And there are few today who

would deny the automobile’s effect on climate

change. This is an impressive set of consequences from one business decision.

 

There are many who argue that Sloan’s strategy

does not constitute a conspiracy in the criminal

sense, but was merely good business practice.

They point to the fact that while GM was

convicted of an anti-trust violation, that

conviction was over-turned on appeal. The problem

with this argument is that it may be true. Sloan

may have been doing nothing more than exercising

his freedom under the rules of the market. If

Sloan were engaged in an illegal conspiracy, it

would be bad, but if that’s the way the system is

supposed to work, then it is worse. If the

“private” decisions of a few powerful individuals

can determine the urban, political, geopolitical,

and climatological realities of the nation and

the world, then “freedom” becomes a very

paradoxical quality, because the “freedom” of a

few limits the freedom of all. So long as viable

alternatives existed, the decision to purchase a

Ford was a free decision. But as soon as the

alternative is eliminated, freedom also

disappears; as a car becomes a necessity, it

ceases to be a free choice. One is still free to

choose the model and color of the car, but not

the fact of the car; one must have a car to

participate in social and economic life. So we

are presented with a paradox: the freedom of

Alfred P. Sloan has the potential to limit the

freedom of everyone else and to result in

conflicts and climate-change that no one is free

to avoid. The question that immediately arises

is, “Can this really be an adequate notion of freedom?”

 

[1] Bradford Snell, The Streetcar Conspiracy

([cited Auguet 2005]); available from

w ww.lovearth.net/gmdeliberat elydestroyed. htm.

[2] Kenneth L. Hess, "The Growth of Automotive Transportation, " (1996).

[3] Census Bureau, Tenure by Vehicles Available

(

John C. Médaille

 

"A dead thing can go with the stream...

but only a living thing can go against it."

-G. K. Chesterton