The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017
More than $8 of every $10 of wealth created last year went to the richest 1%.
That's according to a new report from Oxfam International, which estimates that the bottom 50% of the world's population saw no increase in wealth.
Oxfam says the trend shows that the global economy is skewed in favor of the rich, rewarding wealth instead of work.
"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system," said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @01:30PM (5 children)
Disagree with Oxfam but this assertion is supportable, rent seekers do not create wealth. It's the job of national governments to prevent these bubbles from forming and it's imperative they restrict trans-national entities in order to do so.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 27 2018, @02:16PM (4 children)
No, it's not. And there's a good reason why. Because those governments are a big source of such bubbles. I guess the dotcom and real estate bubbles of the past two decades are a bit ancient for you to remember. When we give them the power and authority to prevent bubbles, it turns out we give them the power and authority to make them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @02:23PM (1 child)
??? [adamsmith.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 27 2018, @05:10PM
So first, we have use of future contracts, high leverage, high prices, and a triggering shock (surge in popularity), classic ingredients of a bubble (the actual paper [chicagobooth.edu] then goes on to mention gambling in the pubs as well - widespread involvement by a clueless public is another warning sign) Yet it can't be a bubble because? Apparently, because the financial information is no longer there to show exactly what happened. Classic argument from ignorance.
Then we see that the blogger claims the dotcom bubble and the real estate crisis weren't bubbles because of some pretty lame reasoning (from an earlier post [adamsmith.org]):
The problem with that assertion is that it was quite clear beforehand that most of the junk in the dotcom stocks didn't have the potential to become the next Microsoft. Similarly, he rationalizes the real estate crisis away:
But looking at the actual charts shows that mid 2000s real estate was higher than earlier in the 2000s and the 1990s, just as one would expect from oversupply followed by a sharp drop during the recession that followed in 2008. Further, these figures don't show what the blogger wants them to show. A better figure is the home ownership [wikipedia.org] rate. For the link which shows the US rate, this peaked in mid 2000s with a decline starting around the beginning of 2007 with a large 4% drop from that time (69% peak home ownership rate to 65% today).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @04:53PM (1 child)
dude you are blind if you can't see governments are in place so they can bail out the mega banks and corporations that very few of that 1% own
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 27 2018, @05:48PM
Insurer of last resort is generally considered a legitimate function of government. So some level of "bail out" is expected when things go really bad on a large scale. What sets the bail outs of past decade (for example) apart is that the bailouts depended on political connections (Bank of America and the United Auto Workers doing preferentially much better than the buyout targets of BoA during 2007-2010 period or the bond holders of General Motors and Chrysler who should have been ahead of the UAW in the bankruptcy proceedings).