World's 85 richest have same wealth as 3.5 billion poorest

What I would be interested in, is whether this has changed much over time. The Rothschild’s, it is claimed, had a fortune of over $1 trillion, which is more than the 35 top richest people in the world.

If money is power, then an infinitesimal group of men are running the world.

How many men should be ruling the world?

… and how many should have the same wealth as everyone else combined?

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

[Aaron Blumer]

How many men should be ruling the world?

That’s easy: One. ;^)Until then …

Yes, one! That does have implications for the “until then” though. We can infer that there is nothing inherently wrong with power being concentrated in a relatively small portion of the population.

I asked the question because discussions/articles on this topic tend to be built on unexamined assumptions. The article in the OP does a little bit better than average, because it at least states the main economic assumption:

In a report titled “Working for the Few” released Monday, the global aid and development organization detailed the extent of global economic inequality created by the rapidly increasing wealth of the richest, warning of the major risks it poses to “human progress.”

But it does leave it in the assumption category. There is no evidence in the piece that inequality itself hinders human progress. The title of the report reveals an assumption “working for the few.” The subtle error is in thinking that if we work for a powerful wealthy few, we somehow have less. We may have less relative to the few, but do we actually have less? To put it another way, when we “work for the few” we are also working for ourselves and our families. There is no inherent disjunction.

Further, because value actually derives from human affections/desires, there is really no limit to the “amount of wealth” that can exist in the world. The few having more does not result in there being “less for the rest of us.”

These false either-or ideas are usually assumed and not examined at all to see if they’re actually true.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

While I don’t necessarily prescribe to this way of living, it is fairly well documented that those countries who are democratic and highly socialized, typically are considered in the top rankings for happiness, social mobility, income equality, best educated, healthiest, and with the lowest corruption scores. Typically these are the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark) and Switzerland. Take the information for what it is worth, I know a ton of holes can be found in them.

A meaningless statistic because:

  • There has always been the uber-wealthy
  • If they distributed all of their wealth to the 3.5 trillion each would probably get a buck or two and it wouldn’t help them and would be wasted
  • These 85 are not actually ruling the world
  • It’s easy for Americans to look at the uber-wealthy and “feel’ poor but the poorest American is uber-wealthy to the vast majority of the world’s inhabitants

The problem is not that there are a few men who control most of the world’s wealth, but that these men also will necessarily have more control over the lives of the rest. With that money, they will be able to influence law makers, politicians, judges, etc. They will gain control over the world’s industries, using corporations they can make it difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to exist. Through the banks and wall street they can drive up prices of homes and gasoline, thus making life more difficult for the poor in this country. But most importantly, because the wealthy will always maintain control over the media, they decide what we will think about, and what ideas are ‘politically incorrect’, thus limiting free speech and the pursuit of truth.

[christian cerna]

The problem is not that there are a few men who control most of the world’s wealth, but that these men also will necessarily have more control over the lives of the rest. With that money, they will be able to influence law makers, politicians, judges, etc. They will gain control over the world’s industries, using corporations they can make it difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to exist. Through the banks and wall street they can drive up prices of homes and gasoline, thus making life more difficult for the poor in this country. But most importantly, because the wealthy will always maintain control over the media, they decide what we will think about, and what ideas are ‘politically incorrect’, thus limiting free speech and the pursuit of truth.

  • Think of the diversity in the economy: NYSE lists 1867 companies / NASDAQ lists 2773
  • And that’s just the listed companies … thousands upon thousands of small companies that manage to compete against the big boys
  • We haven’t really seen banks & wall street drive up the cost of housing or gasoline (an effective supply and demand system is in place)
  • Income tax and anti-trust keeps things honest. (Consider how the oil companies were broken up or railroads … or think of the diversity in the computer industry
  • Businessmen probably favors Republicans but Democrats manage to get elected
  • So don’t see it! Sorry!

these men also will necessarily have more control over the lives of the rest. With that money, they will be able to influence law makers, politicians, judges, etc. They will gain control over the world’s industries, using corporations they can make it difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to exist. Through the banks and wall street they can drive up prices of homes and gasoline, thus making life more difficult for the poor in this country. But most importantly, because the wealthy will always maintain control over the media, they decide what we will think about, and what ideas are ‘politically incorrect’, thus limiting free speech and the pursuit of truth.

A lot of linking there … without supporting evidence. (Correlation is not evidence of cause.)

It’s true that if you control enough of points along the chain of an industry, you can mess with prices to a degree. Actually controlling them is pretty hard to do in countries with strong anti-trust legislation or highly centralized government regulation. For example, it’s not easy for one company or one extremely wealthy individual, or what have you, to control gas prices because you not only have to control what retailers are charging at the pump, you also have to control the refineries, the process of obtaining the raw resources to begin with. To really control prices you’d have to also control politics in multiple nations. Foreign oil at least is extremely politics-sensitive (though the US now imports less oil than it produces, by the way). Throw in transportation costs. Each step of the way you have competitors because you’re not the only company that wants to dominate the industry. And you also have the reality of demand or lack of it. In an economic slow-down, there is downward price pressure on many items because of decreased demand. To hold prices or raise them, you have decrease supply. Even small companies have to cut back on production because they cannot afford to have excess inventory sitting around that nobody wants. (In the US, gas supplies have been a problem for a good while due, in no small part, to lack of refineries… due to government regulation. Increased pollution and other environmental controls have also steadily increased production and marketing costs. On the whole, these may be good regulations, but there’s no question they create upward pressure on prices because they create real increases in expense.)

And don’t forget that when you’ve expended all the manpower, time, money to control these things you’ve incurred additional costs as well, so that the price you’ve managed to keep high or jack up higher has brought increasing expense with it, decreasing it’s actual value.

It’s not as easy as popular economic cliches suggest.

But at a deeper level, consider this: suppose it’s a given that somebody is going to largely “control” most of industry, media, etc. If not these people, who? Why are others better ones to be in control than these? Should people who can’t succeed in business control business? It’s not obvious to me that they should.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

[christian cerna]

http://socioecohistory.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/10-mega-corporations.png

And that’s just a chart showing food companies in America. You could just as easily find a similar chart for media, tech, oil, banks, retail, etc.

Nice chart on the food companies - and who owns them? Aside from Mars all are public companies - anyone investing in say a S&P 500 mutual fund owns a part of them. Same will the big oil companies, tech, banks, et cetera.

Your chart proves nothing!

Who owns them? Well, technically I suppose you could say anyone with shares in the company. But what if an extremely wealthy Arab prince decides he wants to buy up a majority of the shares of Ford. Another Arab buys up millions of dollars in shares in GM. Another Arab buys some of Dodge. Is it not possible they could collude with each other to work within their respective auto companies, to try to suppress electric vehicle research and design? After all, if electric vehicles become the norm, it would hurt their petroleum businesses.

Also, in case you haven’t heard, there is something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP) that Obama and his minions is secretly trying to get passed. Scary stuff. If this thing passes, life in America is going to change drastically. It will make the crash of 2008 look like child’s play.

http://www.citizen.org/tpp